You find ways to push yourself into the sound through repetition. It doesn't stay the same. It morphs constantly.

When I first started doing the quieter, more acoustic material in Swans, there was a lot of derision and outright hatred from the audience and press, just as in the early days of Swans when we were rejected outright because of the bludgeoning, single-minded violence of the music.

As far as playing playing festivals and everything, I feel like that's what I was born to do. I'm an entertainer, hopefully in the best sense.

I could never release something on the label I didn't personally love. The label's really an extension of my own musical career, and I'm intensely involved with every aspect personally, so it'd be a betrayal to myself if I released something simply because I thought it would make money.

Playing an old record doesn't interest me at all. It's exactly the opposite of what I want to do.

The music takes you. It has to be alive. It's like you hammer something, and the way it happens to bleed leads you into new directions.

I got involved, for the most part, in the actual song construction, lyrics even. I didn't want to write the lyrics, but if there was a howler in there, I definitely pointed it out. Just trying to bring it up to a higher level. Of course, after a couple records, people get fed up with that. That's fine.