Swans open their final album Birthing with this slow-burning epic, The Healers, building from ominous beginnings to a deafening crescendo.

“My hope,” says Michael Gira, “is that the music provides a positive and fertile atmosphere in which to dream”. It’s a perfect summary of the music made by his band Swans.

With its overwhelming intensity and immersive depth, this typically cathartic tune from their final album seems to sum up the season just now, as November draws to a close and autumn turns to winter.

It’s also the final song on my latest monthly playlist because, well, it’s 20 minutes long and it starts gently and, like many of their compositions, builds slowly to a deafening crescendo. Which makes it the perfect closer.

Swans, much like their fellow travellers Mogwai, are archetypal purveyors of the calm before the storm, their music swelling to violent peaks of positive emotion and receding to troughs of existential despair; usually in the space of the same song.

The Healers, an apt title for a piece of music whose effect is to leave the listener feeling emotionally and psychologically cleansed, is the opening track on their last album Birthing, a journey from bleak minimalism to industrial noise, illuminated by the voice and lyrics of Gira.

It’s their last album in both senses: released earlier this year and destined to be the final one by Swans in their current form. As Gira explains: “Swans will continue, so long as I’m able, but in a significantly pared down form.” It is, as Sean Millard, reviewer at Louder Than War put it: “a monolithic, crushing behemoth of a farewell disc.”

This song, he adds, “is a sorrowful exploration of deicide, lost hope and prayer, momentarily dissolving into complete chaos before we exit, with Gira screaming his disappointment and disgust at whatever god-like entity has deserted him and who is therefore in his sights. Equally, he could be raging at the mirror, with self-loathing at his bloated sense of self-importance. It’s a beautiful, human, thing.”

I couldn’t put it better myself, so I won’t try. I recommend listening to it all the way through, at the loudest volume you can tolerate. It’s what Gira would want.