Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor are back for their newest and most eagerly awaited album, No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead. This upcoming record, their first since 2021's G_d's Pee At State's End!, comprises six tracks that promise to uphold the band's renowned style of merging ambient textures with explosive crescendos. The album's title, steeped in the bleak realities of a world fraught with turmoil and disintegration, is echoed in the music itself. The compositions integrate field recordings, sparse instrumentation, and solemn hymns, embodying their anti-war and anti-capitalist ethos. Known for their dramatic contrasts and expansive, multi-part pieces, Godspeed You! Black Emperor continue to blend influences from post-punk, progressive rock, and avant-garde. No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead promises to deliver a compelling and introspective listening experience, staying true to the band's politically charged and dystopian themes.
A Military Alphabet (Five Eyes All Blind) (4521.0kHz 6730.0kHz 4109.09kHz)/Job's Lament/First Of The Last Glaciers/Where We Break How We Shine (Rockets For Mary) (18:38)
Fire At Static Valley (19:33)
Government Came (9980.0kHz 3617.1kHz 4521.0 KHz)/Cliffs Gaze/Cliffs' Gaze At Empty Waters' Rise/Ashes To Sea Or Nearer To Thee (5:55)
Our Side Has To Win (For DH) (6:23)
Review: RECOMMENDED
It's pretty much impossible not to get very, very excited about the prospect of a new Godspeed record. The outfit pretty much wrote the book on huge, epic, fantastical chamber rock with a punk edge when they first set about trying to soundtrack the decline of Western civilisation back in the late-1990s, and following reformation circa 2010 have only felt more relevant.
State's End! is a fitting addition to a back catalogue almost-entirely comprising landmark records, and while very much in the same vein as the band's previous, it's also original enough to confirm the group are still as incomparable as ever (albeit some have noted this album takes them one-step closer to a latter day Pink Floyd). Soaring, rousing, tense instrumental rock that also packs a vital message - the world needs to change tact before all is too late - it's likely this will be one of the year's most essential releases.
Review: The Canadian post-rock instrumentalists return with a demand for revolution, soundtracked by just shy of 45 minutes of orchestral aggression. As with all of their work, GY!BE convey their ideas articulately through evocative wordless music. The opener, 'Undoing a Luciferian Towers' sets a tone for the album with a monolithic and militaristic march. Passages of feedback open out into anthemic expanse on the three parts of 'Bosses Hang'. 'Fam/Famine' balances between harmonic assonance and dissonance, ramping up the tension before the final triptych 'Anthem Of The State' takes a more optimistic tone, with the movement away from noise providing some glimmers of light in the abyss. 'Luciferian Towers' is an impeccable and polished record, and possibly Godspeed You! Black Emperor's finest to date.
Review: The Canadian sonic soothsayers here deal out their shortest, and most immediate record since their 1997's debut, yet for all its 40-minute brevity, there's no shortage of the kind of monolithic intensity that the band have become renowned for. As orchestral and elegiac as it triumphantly amp-abusing, "Asunder..." is a masterclass in windswept atmospherics, powerful dynamics and apocalyptic grandeur, building to a climax with enough emotional heft to shake any listener's world on its axis. Existing more than ever outside of genre and comparison, Godspeed continue to inhabit an awe-inspiring sonic landscape that is theirs and theirs alone.
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