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GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
(Constellation)
 "We Drift Like Worried Fire"
"Mladic"
It's been a decade since Godspeed You! Black Emperor delivered one of their coded missives to the struggling world, and after the surprise announcement two weeks ago that we should expect a transmission, it has arrived as promised, and not a moment too soon. The Canadian collective cut a broad swath across the indie world in the late-'90s with a dark instrumental sound that drew on a diverse range of modern music, from rock to post-rock to metal, from noise to classic soundtrack atmospherics to classical composition and minimalism, always underpinned with a sharply political bent that somehow managed to seep into their wordless music, adding layers of meaning and intensity to the brooding tones. Their last record came out in 2002, but after years of total silence, the band began to perform again recently, and now they have graced us with these four new tracks (actually the core of this album has been in the group's live repertoire since the early 2000s), including a pair of 20-minute workouts that are among the heaviest, deepest and most intriguing recordings that Godspeed has ever made.
Album opener "Mladic" enters with a found-sound vocal snippet and a hypnotizing melody that seems to blend an Eastern-sounding string melody with the drone of harmonium, soon joined by a birdsong of plucked guitar notes that are slowly enveloped by a menacing, overdriven guitar orchestra that is darkly metallic and numbingly powerful. The track is a paranoid, uncomfortable and purely cathartic ride that caresses and pummels in equal measure, building and morphing several times, moving in several directions simultaneously, but always with a measured and deftly assured logic that is inescapable. It's primal music, to be sure, moody and deeply abstract, but somehow this band, through their dense and hallucinatory artwork, their ungainly and evocative titles, and their backs-turned attitude towards much of the commercial side of making music, manage to imbue their records with a sense of freedom and rebellion that is both deeply subversive and utterly embracing and humanizing. Surely we project our own hopes and desires on the art that we love, and Godspeed's music leaves so much open to interpretation, but it's hard to listen to this album without feeling like the band forced themselves out of hiding after all these years because they felt the crumbling world needed to hear this message; now it's up to you to decode. Time is of the essence, it's almost too late already, and I have only one clue -- play loud!!! [JM]
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