Words by Andrew Parks

Michael Gira turns 60 in a couple years, which shouldn’t matter given that the average American male lives to be about 80, but then again, the average American male doesn’t play in a band like Swans. Since its reactivation in 2010, the post-punk pioneers have balanced a tireless tour schedule—sets that often feature 30-minute songs—with cross-continental sessions for Gira’s bravest album yet. Mind you, his career’s been full of ‘em, from the nihilistic no-wave of Filth and Cop to the majestic sprawl of Soundtracks for the Blind. Due out tomorrow through the frontman’s Young God imprint, The Seer isn’t a woe-is-me meditation on mortality; it’s a full-fledged attack on mediocrity, balancing moments of pure, unadulterated beauty with battery ram barrages of noise and downward spiral drones. Several tracks are so dynamic and long they practically warrant their own EPs; instead, we’ve been blessed with nearly two hours of transcendental music.

“I didn’t give a fuck how long it was,” Gira says, after we ask him when he decided to spread The Seer over two discs. “I thought I’d take the material to its greatest extent and figure out how to deal with it later. Paradoxically, the best way to listen to it—maybe not sonically, but thematically—is digitally because you can listen to the whole thing all the way through. I guess it’s the revenge of the digital age.”

With that in mind, we interviewed Gira about every track in depth, all of which are available to stream exclusively alongside his commentary down below…