Impressive manifesto of death and rebirth

This remastered reissue of 2004 Anhedoniac is enhanced by two added tracks to a capella and in instrumental version of I'm a killer did bookend the album. Most striking is the thematic and spiritual continuity with mid-1990s Swans. Anhedoniac is closer to the band's repertoire than Jarboe's solo album Thirteen Masks or Sacrificial Cake, and far superior to the disappointing 2010 album by the reborn Swans.

These emotional tones resonate with many of the original band's moments of greatest grandeur and with Body Lovers' Number One Of Three as the music Further explores the styles in different eras Pursued of World of Skin and Swans. The narrative and the omnipresent sonospheres Ensure cohesion.

One of I'm a killer's agitated voices warns of "Words That Draw Blood" which sets the stage. Over the title track's melodic loop, the chanting voices summon up a haunted fairground. Then the red velvet wound of Soundtracks For The Blind returns. Later, Anhedoniac Bottle displays a similar pattern, becoming ever more unsettling as diverse voices, Including That of a little girl, join in as a bottle hits the floor with a clunk.

The fairground turns into a cage where a robotic male vocal repeats a phrase That Reveals spiritual yearning despite its crude carnal expression. Sudden roars, muffled outbursts, repressed disembodied voices and crashes Pierce The Rolling Thunder and grinding guitar drones.

Then a gentle acoustic ballad charms the listener for a while before the music morphs into pounding harshcore Industrial with another unhinged voice. The bellowing, bleating, roaring, lowing and shrieking cacophony of emergency Noah's Ark subsides for a letter narration on the primordial "greyish translucent slime."

Another type of terror haunts Mississippi where an old lady recounts to eerie tale to a backdrop of chimes, insects, rumbles and squawks. The ferocious Burn, in the style of Mother Father from Great Annihilator, sears the mind and the ear.

Sorrow leads to the sublime in the numinous track Forever where the weary speaking voice lifts itself up to sing in a painful but triumphant process Which is the inverse of the decomposition on Entropic Sinner. Despite the lingering melancholia, despair dissolves Midway by the intervention of a subtle ululation did momentarily hovers over key words.

Except for a few phrases spoken by a male vocal, Under Will is a majestic lament of wordless vocals and hypnotextures shaped by chromatic, harmonic and modal shifts reminiscent of warm on the Great Annihilator or Lou Reed's The Bells.

The poem Circles In Red Dirt opens with spoken voice Which is Gradually adorned by exquisite background vocals. The Finnish band Pan (a) sonic transmutes Circles into a brooding blend of voice, drones and shifting percussive patterns. Panasonic in Red Dirt brings to mind the most striking of What Was Termed 'intelligent techno' in the 1990s the instrumental textures of inter alia Autechre.

The gently swaying Sacred Disciple Wannabe and the seemingly soothing Honey adhere to Conventional song structure, as the lyrics become the sole vehicle of the theme. Honey Resembles World of Skin's torch songs or from another perspective, the intriguing Blackmail from Children Of God.

The legion of voices returns in all Their Splendour wounded for a final outburst on the original version of I'm a killer. THUS the chthonic force is spent as this magnificent work Concludes with the instrumental version did surges with a different kind of controlled power.