Sign In to rate and review
CRITIC REVIEWS
100
The Seer is the culmination of Gira’s 30-year-journey; his finest two hours, if you will.
11y
100
It’s an exhausting and maddening document, but one can’t help but emerge from it filled with a renewed radiance.
11y
100
Swans unleash a new brand of hell on Earth: a feverish, post-apocalyptic beast that took thirty years to craft.
10y
100
With The Seer, one thing is certain: Even during its quietest lulls, Gira has never sounded louder.
11y
100
The Seer is 30 years’ worth of effort, a unique and exciting height earned after decades of creation, experimentation and unconventional musical disassembly.
11y
100
The Seer is clearly brilliant, and may even be Swans’ finest album yet, three decades in.
11y
90
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.
10y
90
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
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
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
To say that it’s possible to contain ‘The Seer’ in print would be to do it a disservice.
90
It manages to expand on their sound while simultaneously summarizing everything they've ever recorded before.
11y
90
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.
11y
90
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.
11y
90
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.
11y
85
The Seer is a superlative album which ranks amongst the very best work released under Swans name.
11y
85
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
It's no idle boast: over two hours, their 12th album covers all points from brutality to beauty in pursuit of epiphanies.
80
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
This is Swans at their most user-unfriendly and trouser soiling.
Print Only
1y
80
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.
11y
80
The Seer won't be for everybody, but deserves to win new converts.
80
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.
11y
80
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
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
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.
11y
76
With great ambition comes great risk. Nine times out of 10, The Seer’s sonic gambles pay off massively.
11y
75
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.
11y
70
Gira's voice has weathered grandly, as black and musty as the stub of a Cuban cigar.
Print Only
1y
70
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
It’s a bold and stark opus worthy of attention, if your attention span is long enough.
60
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.
10y
60
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.
I thought fuck it today and decided to review this instead of tomorrow as I planned. Swans has been a special band for me so far and has changed my perception of what rock really is. Also that dog is fucked up fr.
Anyway, The Seer, an album I am not at all ready to get into, but 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 ... read more
[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
This album absolutely blew me away. I've listened to a couple Swans albums before (Great Annihilator and Children of God), so I'm no stranger to their intense, atmospheric style, but this was on another level for me. Whether it's slow and quiet or loud and raging, every piece of The Seer comes together to create the most frightening and immersive project I've ever experienced.
![David Bowie - ★ [Blackstar]](https://cdn2.albumoftheyear.org/200x/album/2016/43569-blackstar.jpg)
Contributions By
wallver, patton, royalflush, thisisabtlgrnd, philthy, Alejandro González, erik, domvic, OPENblinds, asianboyian, South101Become a Donor
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Donor badge, no ads + more benefits.
Advertisement
Track List
Disc 1
| 1 | Lunacy 6:08 | 97 |
| 2 | Mother of the World 9:57 | 95 |
| 3 | The Wolf 1:35 | 88 |
| 4 | The Seer 32:14 | 95 |
| 5 | The Seer Returns 6:17 | 94 |
| 6 | 93 Ave. Blues 5:21 | 92 |
| 7 | The Daughter Brings the Water 2:40 | 88 |
Disc 2
| 1 | Song for a Warrior 3:58 | 95 |
| 2 | Avatar 8:51 | 96 |
| 3 | A Piece of the Sky 19:10 | 97 |
| 4 | Apostate 23:01 | 98 |
Total Length: 1 hour, 59 minutes
Year End Lists
| #1 | / | Cokemachineglow |
| #1 | / | The Quietus |
| #3 | / | Tiny Mix Tapes |
| #4 | / | No Ripcord |
| #4 | / | Stereogum |
| #5 | / | Consequence of Sound |
| #5 | / | Pitchfork |
| #5 | / | PopMatters |
| #6 | / | TIME |
| #7 | / | A.V. Club |
More Lists
Please stay on topic. To go off topic, head to the General Chat.
Sign in to comment
3w
Swans try to have an album cover that isn't the most hideous thing on the planet challenge
Added on: August 10, 2012