Swarm

Upon Swarm’s 2016 release, Brooklyn-based Bambara had been honing their noise-rock brutalism since forming in Athens, Georgia in 2009. On Swarm, their second full-length, the band began to pull their approach into sharp focus, and the result was a foundational triumph. After the pure noise experimentation of their 2013 debut Dreamviolence, here the band began to develop many of their later trademarks. Marrying the maniacal ravings of The Birthday Party and the brutality of early Swans with the tangled roots- punk of The Gun Club, the spotlight started to fall on vocalist/ guitarist Reid Bateh’s lyrics as well as the “Spaghetti western” atmospherics that would come to the fore to such effect on later releases such as Shadow On Everything and Stray. For fans of Bambara’s visceral and pummeling performances, which led to extensive touring opportunities along rising star contemporaries such as Gilla Band, Algiers, and IDLES before earning the band