With eerie beauty and fearless ambition, GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR delivers a raw, cinematic post-rock journey that rattles the mind and stirs the conscience.
If you aren’t familiar with chamber rock, the title GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR will look like the nightmares of a maniac on drugs. Then comes the album title as well. You start to think, what am I clicking, and then going to listen to. This is imagination on ayahuasca, caffeine, LSD and the power of music. Scratch the first 3. Somehow, this band knows how to do make it past your conscious into the deepest parts of your subconscious. This album is called “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”. The title is a direct reference to the death toll of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the Israel–Hamas war.
You must understand, listening to them is like watching as well. The two mediums don’t have a divide, what you can hear is what your eyes might want to see as well. There are several sound bytes in GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR making their creations an intertwining nugget with history. As brilliant as it is, you must accommodate your brain for explorative chamber rock. Otherwise, you’re just looking towards misgivings of a band that could have made it. This requires an open mind, and is not for everyone.
A unique history : GYBE
Let’s get a little bit of a history nugget. In the late 1990s, the group’s breakthrough came with 2000s majestic double-album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. Then there was the hiatus, where band members explored their horizons in music and beyond. In 2012, the band released Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!. It was a career defining move, and perhaps the world wanted more of this chamber rock. Just to sit and meditate on it for a while.
SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS is the first sound you get from them in 12 years. The distorted guitar and echoing ambience invites you for a post rock session that will be unforgettable. GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR writes back into their signature style, with a mellow, charming feel, adjusting the listener into the new decade. If the band has any aural dreams, they are understood over longer periods of time, just to deliver to us through audio bytes that transcend the time they have been away.
Sound: As you would face it
BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD is a psychedelic exploration that uses the ambience to be the most powerful visual. It is an incredible experience, as it carries the source, theme of their sound. Nor do any of these songs lead to a singular unified theme, nor should they. These all encapsulate moments very well, while being a challenging bed of thought for listeners. As they explore with different audio styles, they interweave masterfully to help you extend a moment for long enough. It is this haven where you’re vibrating with the same intensity as the note. You might be confused by the titles, but they have no relation to the music. Maybe in a depraved, long form non-sequitur.
It is a 13-minute epic you’re swirling inside, trying to make shape of what is forming very slowly. It is the formation of a whole organism, one pulse and organ at a time. The crafted willingness of a band to not cater to what the world consumes now as a whole. Wait. The emotion will come in. RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD make you wonder, once more, where you are. If you’re taken to a place with a different sound leading your thoughts, why limit yourself to reality. The moment is more than rewarding, creating an embellishment of sorts that rewards you for experiencing it the whole way. A journey to be remembered, not the destination. You’re left behind with lesser than you came with, for the intensity of the songs make you think.
Beyond the style
GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR are the collective that enjoy the kind of listenership they have. It is like Marconi Union, where the longer experiences are part of your a singular, governing purpose. Staying in that state of limbo, you might be in a cocoon where you get to grow or self-destruct. It entirely depends on your state of mind before exploring what is being delivered to you.
BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL comes next, bringing with it a feel that casts a long, speckled shadow. There are ambiences that show us glimpses of history, while still giving you an enamouring experience. There is a thrill larger than life, where GYBE are at their very strongest. The result is something unforgettable, which you know even you weren’t ready for. Each emotion is magnified, escalated to a purpose where sound does all the talking. In an instrumental album, enough words have been spoken, just purely by melodic skill and masterful production. Listen to the experimental sound of GYBE here:
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Self professed metalhead, moderately well read. If the music has soul, it's whole to me. The fact that my bio could have ended on a rhyme and doesn't should tell you a lot about my personality.
