The album is noteworthy due to its extended song lengths, particularly its over thirty minute title track, as well as its frequent experimentation with drone and noise elements.

Swans' previous studio album My Father Will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky was released in 2010 to universal critical acclaim.

[5] After a year of touring, they recorded in New York while Gira spent the next five months doing overdubs and fleshing out songs written on his acoustic guitar.

Chris [Pravdica, Swans' bass player] pointed me to a few of Karen's solo works where she sings in this really gentle, compassionate, soulful way.

"[6] Former Swans member Jarboe also made an appearance on the album once Gira met her after an Atlanta tour as he needed "some female vocals doing these kind of drone chords.

[11] Writing for Rolling Stone, Will Hermes called the album Swans' "grandest statement yet" and described the title track as "a season in hell, and then some.

"[13] Thom Jurek of AllMusic described The Seer as "the most sprawling, ambitious, thoughtfully conceived and tightly performed recording in the band's catalog.

[22] Pitchfork ranked it at fifth, with writer Stuart Berman writing that The Seer "evinces a magisterial grandeur and hypnotic allure, elevating Swans’ seedy, sewer-scraping depravity into an extravagant, cinematically scaled noise.

Club staff ranked the album seventh in their best of 2012 list and stated that "Gira did the seemingly impossible and topped [My Father], however, with the Seer".