Swans are my favorite band, but this documentary sucks. First of all, why is Amanda Palmer in this? She has nothing to do with Swans and adds nothing of value. In fact, she deducts a whole lot of value because she's annoying! Only about 20% of the film is actually about the story of the band. Most of it is just 10 second snippets of songs or concert footage that's edited in with the dialogue. I also think it pays undue attention to the post-reunion stuff when everyone know the interesting story is what happened in the 80s and 90s... I don't think they even mentioned The Great Annihilator! Do yourself a favor and read 'Sacrifice and Transcendence', I don't think there's a single fact in this documentary that isn't covered in more detail in that book.

The first 80 mins of this are a really interesting profile of the early to mid stage band (albeit without too many revelations). The second 80 mins could be trimmed by ~50% or more. It devolves somewhat into snippets of live versions of long atmospheric songs interspersed by meaningless comments from fans. The major issue here is that by cutting up the long songs they lose all impact and cohesion. I found the comments from random fans at gigs odd to include in the main edit, and the comments from 'celebs' especially in the 2nd half had little insight - all a bit fanboy/hero worship.

I think more exploration into what was driving the band members to produce the 'comeback' albums, what it meant to them, personal experiences from the studio/road, how it fitted in to current trends or... why they eventually became popular with totally inaccessible music - all would've been much more interesting. These 4 albums are not documented separately like the earlier records - and we lose focus on the development from one record to the next. It all blurs into one with not much to say.

In summary, watch it for the history but... expect to lose interest second half.