There are few things in this world that will make me drop everything instantly and scream incessantly like a child. New music from enigmatic Canadian post-rock/metal legends Godspeed You! Black Emperor is absolutely one of them. It was shocking enough when the band rose from the ashes of a seemingly indefinite hiatus a few years ago, started playing out again, and dropped a massive and amazing album in the form of Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! I’m not sure why, but I really had no expectations of the band coming back anytime soon to blow my mind again. So suddenly seeing their label Constellation Records casually drop news of a new album along with a nearly 8-minute excerpt is more than enough to drive me into Muppet-like arm-flailing mode. Get details and listen to the new track after the jump.
The new album will be titled Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress and will feature one track running at 40:23. The excerpt you can listen to above is called ‘Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!’ It would seem based on this that the track will be split into a suite-like format with individual movements like this. Of the work, Constellation has this to say:
Known to fans and through live show recordings by the sobriquet “Behemoth”, GYBE has gradually distilled this new work down to a fastidious and uncompromising essence in the studio, with the swing-time swagger of the opening unison riff in “Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!'” giving way to increasing microtonal divergences and an exhilarating immersion in the harmonic power of massed amplified instruments, before collapsing into some of the most visceral and unalloyed noise/drone the band has yet committed to tape on “Lambs’ Breath” and “’Asunder, Sweet’”. The album closes with “Piss Crowns Are Trebled”, a classic 14-minute piece of vintage Godspeed, where ascending and descending guitar and violin melodies intertwine over gut-rattling distorted bass in 3/4 time, segueing into a pummeling four-on-the-floor series of sparkling, soaring crescendos
Of ‘Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!’ I can honesty say that I am absolutely floored. The immediate hugeness and prominence of horns co-mingling with guitars in this relentless theme is simply Godspeed doing what Godspeed does best. It is mysterious, rapturous, joyous, and mournful all in one package. This is already a brilliant and logical jumping point from where they left off with Allelujah, and needless to say, this album has jumped to the top of my most-anticipated albums list for this year. Let us all rejoice and bask in the gift that our music gods have bestowed upon us today. For it is good.
Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress is out via Constellation March 31. You can pre-order it here.
-NC