Holy Crap-elujah!: Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

on Oct 2, 2012

In a mere couple of weeks, Godspeed You! Black Emperor will complete a circle started two years ago when they began to play live again, releasing their first new studio album in a decade, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! Before the October 16th on-sale date, you can buy the album on their current tour. A couple people have now done this, and put the album up on YouTube as of Tuesday, so there went that afternoon.

GYBE's practice space
One of the leaks appears to be the album in full, while the other plays the sides in opposite order, and is missing roughly fourteen minutes of droning pieces. We listened to the former. However, since we don't know for sure if it is the full album -- or which side even goes first -- we've decided not to put on our thesis paper helmets, and let someone else try to figure out how to simultaneously reference Situationists International, the military industrial complex, and, somehow, Ty Segall. Instead, we've put some footnotes together (matched to the times of the YouTube clip), highlighting the moments where GYBE remind the listener why the past decade has been so very, very empty without them.
  
We're not even gonna front with feigned partiality. This is hang-up-on-your-therapist exciting. But, as elated as we are to have them back on wax, there's something very disconcerting about GYBE's timing. Their first two records, F#A#(infinity) and Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada, were cauldrons of pre-millenium tension; ominous foreshadowers of the coming ills of the Bush administration and global corporate imperialism. To have this new record drop less than a month before the 2012 election troubles us greatly in that regard. Not to mention, that whole Mayan world death clock thing coming up right before Christmas. Here's hoping that this time civilization will heed their warning before it is too late...



00:01 -- Leaving no doubt as to whether this is a Godspeed record, we are immediately greeted by a creepy-voiced dude talking nonsense. "With his arms outstretched/with his arms outstretched...".

00:20 -- Allow me to reintroduce myself, my name is...the incessant humming of modern society collapsing in upon itself. 

01:15  --  It's an odd feeling to become excited at the sound impending doom, but this impending doom is our old friend. Welcome, Old Friend.

02:20 -- Echoing sounds of seagulls screaming "run for your f@#king life!" Godspeed's ability to coax non-guitar sounds out of their guitars is maybe one of their lesser appreciated skills.

04:00 -- The first of what is sure to be many classic Godspeed "drops" to come.

07:00 -- Keeping more in spirit with Yanqui than with Skinny Fists, they are going for 'dark and heavy' first (if this is the right order...). This sounds like Led Zeppelin tearing up a James Bond spy song.

08:00 -- A more widely appreciated skill of theirs: taking a simple rock riff and driving that f@#ker like a French Canadian monster truck over everything else that tries to sound "big." 

09:30 -- Now it sounds like a joyous folk dance fired out of a Big Muff pedal canon. 

10:00 -- Is it just us, or are there 100 people in this band?

13:30 -- This music is far more suitable for deposing kings than for skimming through pictures of dancing polar bears, but such is the modern condition.

18:55 -- We've been led out into the street and left alone in the middle of a parade, surrounded by muted bells, stomping drums and distant voices.  

21:31 -- This band have mastered 'eerie tension'. We feel like we're about to be murdered by a singing little girl in a dark watery basement.

22:00 -- Are those creepy bagpipes?...Yes??

27:07 -- Water drips out of a rusty faucet in a windowless abandoned loft in an old decaying city center. (Or, it's a guitar.)

31:00 -- Aha, this is the posi-core side! Get ready for some spiritual uplift, Godspeed-style.

31:30 -- Feels like we are at a fictional high school football game in West Texas.

32:00 -- Here's where the synonyms for "soaring" start to come out.

32:51 to 36:15 -- Words fail what this band does best. This rivals the first five minutes of Skinny Fists for the most perfect stretch of music they've ever done.

42:30 -- Charging forward on propulsive bass and drums, this part has a Funeral-era Arcade Fire urgency. If Win stepped to the mic right now, it would not be shocking...

43:30 -- ...but because it's GYBE, that momentum has turned into near silence within a minute.

44:20 -- It's starting to fell like a few bits of great songs that would stand on their own have been stitched together here. It would be interesting to hear the movements on this half of the album extended and given more space to stretch out. 

46:16 -- Back to drone-land!

51:45 -- We're deep into the bad-vibe anti-meditation. Again, something this band does extraordinarily well, but not easily explained if it's not your thing. 

54:44 -- Well, that was draining!  Who else wants ice cream?