“Behind the veil of silver scars, there is a special inverted star Gira flexes his lyrical skills over the most sinister-sounding funk line one could possibly compose. The contrast between this track and “The Seer” is spectacular. The song concludes with some more guitar and harmonica, and ends quite abruptly.īut The Seer returns! Quite literally, in the song “ The Seer Returns“, which is almost as if Swans and Primus had a steamy affair. The dam breaks loose, and listeners are eventually left with a quiet harmonica solo that sounds like it is being played at the edge of eternity. The riff starts very slowly, but gets faster over a drawn-out string section with bells layered on top, before cascading into a wall of noise. The noise slowly fades out into a synchronized drum and guitar line that shoots one in the chest like a machine gun. The listener is too far in to escape, and is fully enveloped in a sea of droning guitars and Gira’s layered vocals, chanting “I see it all, I see it all, I see it all” ad nauseam. It starts immediately after “The Wolf” and opens with ear-splitting bagpipes that drone on for about 2 minutes, fading out into a manic, minor-key guitar, and the most menacing drumming ever laid to tape. The monstrous 32-minute-long “ The Seer” is an absolutely crushing piece and the second best track on the album. It changes the atmosphere of the track completely and leaves the listener with a feeling of dread, perfect for what comes next. The latter is almost entirely spoken-word, with no instruments besides a faint mechanical humming in the background. The piano adds a truly otherworldly feel to this song, and really helps tie the piece together.įollowing this track, a 2-minute interlude bridges “Mother Of The World” and the title track, called “ The Wolf“. The sound suddenly cuts out to Gira’s rhythmic, heavy breathing and an explosive second half. “ Mother Of The World” starts with a marching electric guitar and snares that beat into one’s skull for a draining four minutes, reminding the listener of some kind of ritual song perhaps dedicated to the same beast in “Lunacy”. It is a truly chilling start to the album, despite its relatively short 6-minute runtime. “Your childhood, is over” is repeated to the end of the song. After this melody spirals down into one’s core, an almost somber acoustic passage ends the song. Finally, the chant devolves into “lunacy, lunacy, lunacy…” with the guitar starting and stopping in the same rhythm. Between chants, a piano in minor key and a plodding guitar fill the air, creating a sense of dread. “ Lunacy” starts the album with a religious chant in praise of some kind of horrific creature, possibly the one on the front cover. Gira described the album at a live show as taking “30 years to make”, and “the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made.” The album’s recording and production was funded with the selling of live CDs with material from the album-to-be, but many of the songs on these CDs had a dramatically different pace and structure to their appearance on The Seer. The Seer comes after a nearly 15-year new music hiatus from the band, and 2 years after a significant restructuring of the Swans’ lineup of members. Michael Gira, founder of Young God Records and the mind behind The Seer. Over the two hours that this behemoth spreads its black wings, listeners will hear crushing noise, unusual instruments, incredibly long tracks, and Gira’s manic vocal delivery. The Seer is the band’s best LP to date, and easily their most abstract and evil-sounding. Their music, from the beginning, has always sounded like rock’s fundamentals so greatly corrupted and butchered that they might as well be their own genre entirely.
Swans is a post-rock outfit formed in 1983, masterminded by ex-convict and mad scientist Michael Gira. Swan’s 2012 album The Seer is one of the boldest albums of the past decade, while also sounding so harrowing and terrifying that it could have come out of the depths of hell.
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