Swans
– The Seer
The Seer erupts as an ordeal, a vision quest stretched across nearly two hours of lurching drones, seismic crescendos, and ritualistic fury. Michael Gira commands, beckoning listeners into a sonic abyss that feels less like music and more like a storm system. There’s no pretense of comfort. No tidy arcs. Just the grind of transformation. It’s spiritual, but not the scented-candle kind—more like baptism in boiling tar.
Best of…
The music crawls, pummels, ascends, implodes. Gira and his ensemble treat repetition like a hammer and the listener like the nail. Drums throb with tribal weight, guitars stretch into screeching mantras, and everything breathes like a beast chained to a volcano. Voices chant, whisper, howl—words don’t matter so much as the sound of someone surrendering their sanity. And yet, within this chaos is structure. A kind of savage discipline. Swans aren’t improvising here—they’re building a temple with sledgehammers.
Gira has said this album took 30 years to make. That makes sense—it feels carved out of time, beyond genre, impervious to trend. This is music for apocalyptic devotion, not passive consumption. And when it ends, you don’t feel like clapping. You feel like exhaling.
Choice Tracks
The Seer
A 32-minute centerstone that grinds through feedback loops, slow-burning drums, and vocal incantations. It builds like a storm and breaks like a revelation. The experience is less about “listening” and more about surviving it.
Lunacy
The opener’s haunting repetition of the title word turns mantra into menace. Jarboe and Gira’s voices echo like a dying prophecy, setting a hypnotic tone that never fully lifts.
Mother of the World
Begins with an off-kilter mechanical loop—like a robot’s hiccup—before launching into a hypnotic throb. The relentless rhythm induces trance; the payoff is primal.
The Apostate
Another extended march into the void. Rhythms stutter, collapse, rebuild. It doesn’t end—it dissipates, leaving you weirdly emptied and slightly altered.
Song for a Warrior
A fragile, tender moment sung by Karen O like a lullaby from a ghost. Amid all the darkness, this track floats in like a soft breeze through a concrete bunker.
The Seer is a harrowing, relentless monolith of sound—a marathon of noise, ritual, and revelation. Michael Gira drags you through fire and whispers lullabies in the ashes. It’s not for the faint of heart, but those who endure won’t forget the journey.