Swans -- The Seer "Lunacy! Lunacy! Lunacy!" The chant rises up out of the musical ashes of opening track 'Lunacy', the first of many supreme meltdowns that course through The Seer, the latest monolith of an album by the revived and reinvigorated Swans, following on from 2010?s critically-hailed My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky. Unlike the legion of cynical rock band reunions currently polluting the festival scene, the return of Swans stems from the ongoing and visceral self-exploration of singer Michael Gira, a man so committed to gazing at his inner demons you have to worry for his health. The Seer is a case in point: at nearly two hours in duration, it stretches the boundaries of endurance, albeit in the most blissful way possible. At the album's heart lies the gruelling monster of a title track, a crushing 30-minute epic that initially has the feel of a Neil Young and Crazy Horse stomp, but, with Gira's background in industrial noise and punk, 'The Seer' descends into dark and ominous depths, driven by a band so confident you'd think that these were the original Swans, with 30 years' worth of time together to gel into such a humongous whole. I may have a preference for the early Filth-era material, just because it's so mean and misanthropic, but in terms of cohesion and pure musical talent, this incarnation of Swans takes some beating, and few outfits in rock can match their intensity. 'The Seer' starts off