Spin Magazine

Sinister and seductive, the Swayback's sound - Eric Halborg's throbbing bass and vampiric croon, Martijn Bolster's taut rhythms, the brooding guitar of William Murphy-recalls the Velvet Underground if they were forced to share a jail cell with a codeine-addled Danzig and fed a steady diet of Factory Recod remixes.

Artist Direct

The Swayback are the kind of band that rock n' roll needs right now.The Denver defenders of the faith are very cognizant of their influences, however, they conjure up a sound of their own that's fresh and fiery. Somewhere between The Cure's sensitive darkness and Led Zeppelin's epic bombast sits The Swayback's infectiously entrancing aural experience. They just finished a record with legendary producer and engineer Andy Johns—he worked on records by a few bands you may have heard of, namely Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, and Television.
FULL INTERVIEW

Watching Eric Halborg, bassist and vocalist, front his band is like watching a lion preen after the kill. He's both sedate and wild, or perhaps he just seems sedate because you can see from the passion with which he plays that he has it in him to take down a gazelle at full speed

The Onion

Rock music is a lot like a cup of coffee: Some like it as strong as The Stooges, or dark like Joy Division. The Swayback takes it both ways-usually at the same time. The Denver act revs up the same sort of swagger that's floated around local rock clubs since well, forever but instead of reveling in trashy garage-punk sleaze-gasms The Swayback cuts it with a healthy dose of art-school gloom. Both sides are essential to the band's long-awaited debut, Long Gone Lads. Even when languishing in acoustic, rainy-day sulkers like "Just Like The Old Days" the disc is more dangerous than Interpol's sweatiest nightmare. And when it kicks out the jams on "Concrete Blocks" the trio's command of atmosphere is far more sophisticated that your average Motor City wannabes.

INTERVIEW
JAPANIMPLOSION.COM
TheSwayback is sexy, loud, medieval, a bit dangerous, a bit playful, and a bit strange. It's no wonder they are one of the most beloved bands in this fair city. Women want to be with them and men want to be them, and with them sometimes too. They are one of the only bands in Denver successfully putting out real, real, real fucking rock music, at least A.D. So now I turn to you dear reader, to harness your inner spirit, to spin the sacred wheel of chance, to sizzle like lye on flesh, to dance in the wind whispering delights on the breeze of forgotten souls, and to join The Swayback in a three hour, arm linked, cheap wine induced, head banging session.

Paper Thin Walls

Dance-punk-goth hybrid the Swayback are a young trio from Denver with an enthusiastic local following and a funky, low-slung, low-sung style. A mood of dark theatricality dominates.

Aversion

The band, which hails from the Mile High City, busts our ears up with a style that's drenched in the after-hours atmospherics you'd expect from an Interpol-worshipping band, but uses them to blanket the sort of bare-chested and sweaty riffs we usually get out of a MC5-worshipping band. The two usually disparate elements mesh with ease in The Swayback's hands.

"Concrete Blocks" is pure rock swagger, as the trio converses with the ghosts of everyone from The New York Dolls to Mudhoney, with sleazy, grimy stoner riffs while singer/bassist Eric Halborg's affected disaffected delivery is a keen tie-in to post-punk's darker side. "Vampires in the Mirror" is pure sex, bumping and grinding its way through a slow, throbbing riff that stretches out in the darkness like cigarette smoke rolling through an empty bar. The title track and "Forewarned" seal the band's rock credentials, with biting, ballsy guitars slinging mud and sludge all over the place.

Colorado Music Buzz

Swayback in NYLON Magazine. In the cover story: National Anthems: 100 New Homegrown Bands, NYLON "polled experts across the U.S. to unearth the best, unexpected local music scenes".

The bands sound is loud and fast, raw and ferocious, but I tip my hat off to the very excellent and relatively sedate "Tisk Tisk", a haunting number of riveting beauty. The electronic beats and tremor that is singer Eric Halborgs voice lends the track unmatched darkness and affecting severity.

The noise generated by the three is captivating, its energy grabs hold of your ears. Every note lashes out with raw energy and passion and theres little room for meandering in this threesomes dark and brooding repertoire. A strong debut, The Swaybacks self titled release only hints at whats to come for the Denver trio

Merging the dark, spacious atmosphere of Joy Division with psychedelic fuzz and Detroit-derived noise, Denver's Swayback find an uncommon middle ground between moody post-punk and anarchic proto-punk.

The Swayback has a pretty sharp formula on its hands. Dark as anything to come out of Manchester’s suicidal singers’ minds, yet powerful enough to hold its own in a biker bar, The Swayback forges a much needed and incredibly unlikely bridge between London’s Bat Cave era Detroit Rock City.

The Denver trio surprised me with their dark and unique style, their closest comparison being Joy Division. The vocals, shared by guitarist Eric Halborg and bassist Bill Murphy, span the spooky spectrum from Ian Curtis to Glenn Danzig. Yet the music tends to dance and bounce more often that either of those two groups, courtesy of drummer Martijn Bolster, without losing a sludgy, distorted feel akin to the Stooges

Sticking to their overall vibe, they still deliver surprises. “All Bad News” has the speed and snottiness of a DK song, and then they turn around on the next track “Tisk Tisk” and deliver a more electronic number containing Suicide-ish simplistic drum machine, watery synths and eerie vocals. It all fits into the vein they are going for, yet mixes things up.

Somehow familiar with a combination of agreeable elements, yet incomparable to any other current acts, the Swayback deliver on their debut full-length. They must be gaining quite a fanbase, as they have nabbed opening slots with bands like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Gang of Four and Hot Hot Heat, so I expect you’ll be hearing more from these boys in the future..

BOULDER DAILY CAMERA
Having spent the past couple of years honing its black-as-midnight sound on metro-area stages, Denver's Swayback finally delivers the goods on CD with its ravaging debut, a collection of throbbing goth-punk that resurrects both the sheer power of the Glenn Danzig-era Misfits and the eerie minimalism of Bauhaus. Replete with fuzzed-out basslines, droning guitar solos and Eric Halborg's from-the-beyond vocals, The Swayback is a grimly powerful introduction that recalls buzz-band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's more apocalyptic moments — and portends great things from one of the Front Range's most damaging live acts.

Coming out of Denver the Swayback is a scene unto itself. The band loves to spike its '60s-style guitar rave-ups with '70s stoner rock and '80s Brit pop - and just to round out the decade-hopping, the guys added the dark, '50s bluesy ballad "Down to the Tracks" and the industrial, '90s-flavored "Forewarned" remix.

There's something heroic about The Swayback. The Denver band impressively acts as a medium for a style of music that needs to be heard. Its angular, rapid-fire rock owes as much to Gang of Four as it does Sweet...... with "Distinguished Guest at the Downtrodden Ball" and the "Jon Merrick Blues," the band is driving hard and fast - as a tightly knit, name-taking collective - down a road that should lead its music well beyond Denver's city limits.

The band’s Manchester influences (The Fall, Joy Division) remain an integral part of the overall sound, yet the live séances are now enlivened by the recognition of Australian heroes. “Forewarned” is a scrupulously crafted pop song that melds an influence of The Church’s early work with The Swayback’s trademark sinful despair, while “Earring in the Shag” is as good of a garage-rock song akin to Radio Birdman that anyone could ask for

FAKE DIY / UK
The Swayback amp the crowd with their blend of Fugazi, Joy Division, and Nirvana influences - making it obvious that tonight's theme is, quite simply, rock 'n' roll.

Denver's The Swayback could as easily have been influenced by Joy Division as it could have by Kings of Leon. Their second full-length disc is dark in nature but not gothic. At the onset the guitars are fuzzy swirls of sound, the vocals howl and the drums wail frenzied. Further listens may help your brain to hear a slight garage blues influence coming through but not prevalent. The Swayback is thick in originality, forming their sound to lean toward the post-punk, strange in nature but completely rock n' roll! Packaged complete with a total wall of sound this disc is worth more than one listen!
R.I.Y.L.: Joy Division meets AFI meets Kings Of Leon

MP3 OF THE WEEK
PUNKNEWS.ORG
Slightly fuzzy and strangely melancholic, The Swayback make some dark, restrained-yet-catchy rock 'n' roll that's hard to pin down.

The Swayback's psychedelic freakout conjures the Stooges driving a stake through the heart of Ink and Dagger -- with the Misfits on their knees, snorting up the powdery vampire dust. Eric Halborg's sinister howls leave puncture wounds in the gritty primordial riffs and stubbly bass lines that encase it, allowing agitated shards of feedback to seep through.

Although The Swayback is a gimmick-free group, there's something glam rock about Eric Halborg's voice–it suffuses such propulsive songs as "Distinguished Guest At The Downtrodden Ball," and "Jon Merrick Blues" with arena-big drama, and the latter comes complete with a rawking guitar solo by Bill Murphy.

For a band that blasts out dark, brooding rock, The Swayback sure has a lot of pink on its Web site. And for a guy whose voice on record sounds something like Glenn Danzig on a dance-punk kick, bassist and singer Eric Halborg has a lot to say beyond the whiskey-and-women clichs of heavy rock. "We do it on purpose," says Halborg, a CU fine arts graduate who describes the band as an artistic statement meant to reach a larger audience than the typical gallery. "We like to balance out the rock with higher aspirations. Our art just happens to come out at times as straight rock and roll.

“I’m thinking early punk, where anything went.” He refers to the time in the late 70’s and ‘80s when bands like New York Dolls,Talking Heads, Jodie Foster's Army, were changing the scene. “The best thing about those bands is that you couldn’t classify them. It wasn’t like they sounded like anyone in particular.....

The band's dark, grinding rock — a mix of Misfits sludge and Love and Rockets' artier fare — isn't that far removed from buzz bands like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. The band has snared spots opening for Hot Hot Heat and the Raveonettes.

This is a Denver-based band that should be making it huge-time any day now. They have a really distinct sound. One part Blood Brothers, another part Talking Heads, and another part Motley Crue. Are you ready?

Sounds like Jello Biafra smoking a two-paper bomber with Motorhead. This (fuck, I have to say this) rocks. People say that The Strokes are rock, but that's bullshit and you know it. This is rock.
Grade: A+
Happy Magazine