Godspeed You! Black Emperor Return on Full Blast on Their Latest Suite

Deep into times of pandemic and instability, the famed Montreal post-rock band drop one of their most upfront slices of wordless political nonfiction.

Before the recently released G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's slow but steady output had been marching through a haze. Recent works saw fuzzed guitar/cello walls mostly strung over minimally structured drones and jams. Dignified, but low on bite. With G_d's Pee, the group closes this shadowy chapter and responds to our tumultuous times with a fitting level of potency in their sound and presentation. Not that the looser content didn't satisfy an itch, but G_d's Pee may have an easier time recruiting onlookers for their mission than any 2010s material. The album's colossal arrangements, direct riffs, and frenzied, politically charged song titles call for the attention of anyone in need of some end-times catharsis, not just Godspeed's base of post-rock diehards.

The wailing, triumphant, orchestral-rock of "Cliffs Gaze / cliffs' gaze at empty waters' rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE" followed by the roughed-edged, bittersweet drone of "OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.)" ought to clue you into G_d's Pee's scattered trajectory and aggressive personality. The album is like a magnification of how a brain might respond to catastrophe, confused at how to digest the stimuli, pummeling through whatever disparate emotional pathways might lead to some resolution. Hope sinks to disgust, climbs to ecstasy, plummets back to fear, cycling before the album ends unresolved with a fragile string section that seems to just give up.

Music meant for catharsis can be just as reliant on density as volume, and 2021 Godspeed wield the dense, muddy, slathered-in-noise arrangements needed for such a thing. Softer moments of G_d's Pee tread a swamp of murk, and the louder moments envelop you in thickly-textured guitar and string layers atop the murk, with radio static, field recordings, and crying toy organs in the fold as well. G_d’s Pee’s diverse, overflowing sound body drives the album’s scope. Where recent releases were more cornered in their own caverns, G_d’s Pee speaks more to civilization’s vast reach. It’s a beast tall enough to at any point see hundreds of miles of its decrepit planet.

Believability is expected with Godspeed, but G_d’s Pee is believable in a way that climbs an extra step. It keeps from losing itself in any one emotional pitfall and captures a more wholistic, realistic range of reactions to the modern world, bombastic highs and stomach-churning lows. G_d’s Pee reveals that the weight of Godspeed’s material that was undeniable decades ago is undeniable all the same in 2021.