The behemoth that is Godspeed

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR
An album worthy of five solid stars, Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is a fourmovement opus, marrying ominous soundscapes with epic instramentals.

Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is perhaps the most ethereal experience you’ll have this month. Released on March 31 by the Montreal collective known as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, this album has been the long awaited follow up to the band’s 2012 reunion album, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

The only word that comes close to capturing the essence of Godspeed’s music is epic. This nine-person troupe creates intoxicating soundscapes juxtaposed with deafening walls of distorted guitar.

Although Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is entirely an instrumental album, the lack of a designated vocalist does nothing to detract from its magnitude. In fact a vocalist would do well to destroy the experience of listening to these songs – or song.

Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is actually based around a single live song that Godspeed has been fine-tuning over a number of years called “Behemoth,” and it clocks in at an alarming 40 minutes. Although the album has four movements, the sections flow effortlessly into the next to create an album that is more of an experience than an occurrence.

In contrast to previous releases which coast for a while – fading in from an inaudible hum to a climactic wrath of drums, guitars and string instruments – this latest album explodes into thunderous riffs right off the bat. I don’t mean thunderous like a classic rock band. These riffs are slow, hulking beasts that pound with every note. “Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!” has layer upon layer of crunchy guitars that could be a fitting backdrop to the final standoff in a grimy western movie. After establishing itself as a behemoth of a song, the mayhem amps up with a sporadic guitar solo – a rare occurrence for a Godspeed record – that eventually yields to the introduction of a string section. The strings go through a number of movements backed by heavily overdriven guitars and drones that further elevate it to a sense of optimistic promise. This first track is overall cheerful, as if heralding the arrival and continuation of the band.

All of this is done to exaggerate the album’s drop into a complex and textured soundscape that occupies much of the mid-album. “Lamb’s Breath” seems to have taken much of its influence from sludge rock and serves to shift the aura of this album from that of celebration to fear of an impending apocalypse that could be right around the corner. The muddy guitar gives way to an unearthly soft drone that seems to fill the room and spill into your brain, swashing around with the weight of an ocean. The term drone may give the allusion of being simple or bland, perhaps conjuring up memories of the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but every second of “Lamb’s Breath” is carefully calculated and crafted to bring about an ever-evolving sound.

This part of the album serves to lower our guard and prepare us for the cataclysmic conclusion of this album.

Somewhere around the album’s 22-minute mark, this drone dons a cloak of dissonance that continues to rev up as guitars and strings become more and more apparent. Perhaps the best part of this album is that by the time the soundscape starts to don its ominous colours, we’ve been lulled into a slight trance and it goes predominantly unnoticed. This build is so subtle and carefully articulated, that by the time it’s realized, it’s already in full swing. The apocalypse is here, and it’s only getting darker.

The final piece of Asunder is titled “Piss Crowns are Trebled.” It is both the most epic and also the longest movement in the entire album, boasting an impressive 14 minutes in length. This song is perhaps one of the most vengeful and ravenous conclusions of any Godspeed record to date, harking to new innovation within the band and perhaps displaying some crossover from the band’s side project, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra.

“Piss Crowns are Trebled” welcomes the return of the monstrous guitar riffs and wandering solos of the opening number, with several additions that make the production far outweigh its other bookend. What makes this song so seismic is not merely its juxtaposition to the ethereal mid-album soundscape, but the fake ending placed about halfway through it. Just as we think this album is going to wind down and fade away in typical Godspeed fashion, the band reprises the tune in a hell storm of thunderous guitars, booming drums and piercing strings that all verge on the realm shoegaze.

With the release of Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress, these Montreal trailblazers remain a step ahead of the numerous post-rock rip-off bands that hunger after their sound, delivering an album that is both innovative and conscious of the original direction of the band.

Rating: 5 out of 5