Perhaps because of his fire and brimstone intonation-- which makes Ian Curtis sound like a pistol-whipped soprano-- Swans were often pigeonholed as a too-dark, almost laughable gothic experiment. The assessment is reductive and tone-deaf: at their best, Swans seamlessly layered no-wave and heavyweight industrial pounding with streams of erudite Middle-Eastern drones, drop tuning, monolithic sheets of noise, harrowing, force-fed dynamics, and gorgeously lilting strings and acoustic guitars