Swans - The Seer
Critic Score
Based on 34 reviews
2012 Ratings: #7 / 1118
Year End Rank: #7
User Score
2012 Rank: #2All Time: #93
Liked by 649 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Drowned in Sound

The Seer is the culmination of Gira’s 30-year-journey; his finest two hours, if you will.

100
Tiny Mix Tapes

It’s an exhausting and maddening document, but one can’t help but emerge from it filled with a renewed radiance.

100
Sputnikmusic
Swans unleash a new brand of hell on Earth: a feverish, post-apocalyptic beast that took thirty years to craft.
100
A.V. Club

With The Seer, one thing is certain: Even during its quietest lulls, Gira has never sounded louder. 

100
No Ripcord

The Seer is 30 years’ worth of effort, a unique and exciting height earned after decades of creation, experimentation and unconventional musical disassembly. 

100
FACT Magazine

The Seer is clearly brilliant, and may even be Swans’ finest album yet, three decades in.

90
The Line of Best Fit
It’s a relentlessly foreboding experience, as aggressive in its quietest moments as it is in its most cacophonous, as delicate when bringing a full band assault as when moments of curious, uncomfortable calm unfurl from the chaos.
90
Metal Hammer

By bringing old and new together and reshaping them for his own ends, Gira seems to be reaching for the definitive statement of what his band represents, while basking in the euphoria conjured by his own extraordinary creativity. The Seer is all that and more. Ageless, fearless and peerless: Swans are alive and nothing else comes close.

90
Prefix

It’s an absolute delight to get lost in. Swans have enjoyed a renewed lease on life for two years now, but it’s The Seer that will truly pull the seminal group out of its own considerable shadow.

90
Crack Magazine
Swans’ second album since reforming after a 13-year hiatus sees the band on blistering, career-best form, a sprawling monolith of a record which lurches between bludgeoning noise, woozily lilting Gothic Americana, drone and bastardised Eastern motif-appropriation.
90
Loud and Quiet
To say that it’s possible to contain ‘The Seer’ in print would be to do it a disservice.
90
Pitchfork

It manages to expand on their sound while simultaneously summarizing everything they've ever recorded before.

90
Beats Per Minute

Just be thankful that the new Swans are as clever, as terrifying, and as proficient in their craft as presented on The Seer. There still aren’t any other bands out there quite like this.

90
Consequence of Sound

It’s wily, cunning, and aims to pull out the ecstasy hiding down in the guts of everyone, no matter if it’s uplifting or wretched.

90
AllMusic

Two years after My Father Will Lead Me Up to a Rope to the Sky, The Seer is the most sprawling, ambitious, thoughtfully conceived and tightly performed recording in the band's catalog.

85
The 405

The Seer is a superlative album which ranks amongst the very best work released under Swans name. 

85
Spectrum Culture

The Seer does not show the band at its most raucous and it will not find wide commercial success – which wasn’t ever in the equation anyway – but with its primal instincts and exposed nerve endings revealed at every turn, it makes for one helluva disconcerting, and perversely mesmerizing, listen.

80
The Independent
It's no idle boast: over two hours, their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.
80
NOW Magazine

The Seer will definitely raise the band's profile, although its sheer intensity and ugliness may scare people away. On the other hand, sitting through the whole thing even once is enough to leave a permanent mark on the listener.

80
Mojo

This is Swans at their most user-unfriendly and trouser soiling.

80
PopMatters

The Seer ... is a brave record, one that at times threatens to lose its hold on you, but in the end one that manages to be self indulgent without being self serving. 

80
The Guardian

The Seer won't be for everybody, but deserves to win new converts.

80
NME

This album’s two-hour stretch may seem offputtingly dense at first, but give them time, and Swans ... will take you to a place that is beyond good and evil.

80
Slant Magazine

Sprawling across two discs, comprising 11 tracks and two hours, Swans’ The Seer has a pretty alien configuration for an album, with songs ranging from one to 32 minutes in length.

80
The Skinny

These songs will likely continue to mutate at the band's cathartic live shows, but as it stands The Seer already has much to offer, fusing together aggression and grace with thunderous results.

80
SPIN

The Seer is a planet-eating Galactus of an album. Two hours long and six sides of vinyl, with three separate songs unraveling past the 19-minute mark.

76
Paste

With great ambition comes great risk. Nine times out of 10, The Seer’s sonic gambles pay off massively.

75
Under the Radar

With a firmly established legend behind him, The Seer doesn't serve to endear him to new fans but rather to deepen his already compelling narrative.

70
Uncut
Gira's voice has weathered grandly, as black and musty as the stub of a Cuban cigar.
70
Rolling Stone
There are muses old (vocalist Jarboe) and new (Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Karen O, singing the haunted folk prayer "Song for a Warrior"). But guitar noise is leader Michael Gira's reigning mistress: See the roaring 32-minute title track – a season in hell, and then some.
60
Clash
It’s a bold and stark opus worthy of attention, if your attention span is long enough.
60
musicOMH
It’s a work that demands to be listened to – but it’s difficult to want, with any certainty or honesty, to listen to it again in its entirety.
60
Classic Rock

Even after a week of living with this album, it’s not clear if it’s a work of breathtaking genius or art-wank insanity. It’ll probably turn out to be a bit of both.

BradTasteMusic
100

[Original score 81, then 95] I am rewriting my review for this album

Swans - The Seer is not an easy listen. This is one of the few albums I have heard that has genuinely terrified me to uncontrollable tears. The diverse arrangement of tracks paints a really grim and open story. There is a lot of interpretation to be had with this album. Simply laying back and letting it consume me, I saw the story of this Seer as a physical man becoming a monster. The ending solidified this to me and it sent ... read more

nah_
80

The Seer, an album I was never ready to get into, but one close to my heart. Sometimes we're not always ready for something and sometimes take a big leap into the abyss. This record is a return to how they produced the album Soundtracks for the Blind and continue the theme of two discs and some long ass songs mixed in with average length songs on To Be Kind and The Glowing Man which was a concept I always thought was interesting.

The Seer is.. creepy. Yes, I know. I say that on every Swans ... read more

Hawk_
100
thefatkid
100

It's the first album i heard from then and oh well is this album good. IDC if it's 2 hours it's just that experience it just builds itself for 2 hour to give us some of the best hitting moments of music I've ever listened to. And the fact that yes i kind couldn't fall asleep to it because i was listening to it while going to my vocal lesson when 93 Ave blues hit i was terrified and started to run seeing people walk beside me was one of the weirdest things i did in my life.

denkirena
99

It's really loud and scary but i'm here for it

Winter018
100

The fire dances on the raw wood, a living flame that turns matter into ash while medieval ruins glow under the twilight's gleam. The ancient stones, smoothed by time and marked by centuries of history, seem to narrate tales of days gone by, of forgotten heroes and adventures now faded into the past. The wind whispers through the cracks in the walls, carrying distant echoes of ancient battles and lost victories. It's a place steeped in charm and mystery, where every stone is a fragment of a ... read more

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Track List

Disc 1
1Lunacy
6:08
97
2Mother of the World
9:57
96
3The Wolf
1:35
88
4The Seer
32:14
96
5The Seer Returns
6:17
94
693 Ave. Blues
5:21
92
7The Daughter Brings the Water
2:40
88
Disc 2
1Song for a Warrior
3:58
95
2Avatar
8:51
96
3A Piece of the Sky
19:10
97
4Apostate
23:01
97
Total Length: 1 hour, 59 minutes
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Added on: August 10, 2012