Godspeed You! Black Emperor, heralds of the ever-looming geopolitical apocalypse, have returned. Their latest (and eighth full-length) effort, NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024, 28,340 DEAD, sees them as envoys, detailing the simmering horror and outrage of the anarchist underground in reaction to current events. In 2002, GY!BE released their third LP Yanqui U.X.O., which featured the song ‘09-15-00’,  a reference to the second Palestinian intifada. With that in mind, it’s sobering that 20 years later the band’s new record bears the then (official) death count of Palestinians in the latest conflict – a number which now exceeds 41,000. That is the tone of this record. As the band say when contextualising this album;

“Every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom. … What gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? … This new century will be crueller still. War is coming. Don’t give up. Pick a side. Hang on. Love.”

An unsettling, buzzing signal emits as ‘SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS’ opens, like a radio waking up. Guitar blares out above the ambience, distorting and reaching out into nothingness, a morning tannoy announcement to a town with no-one left. Whirring drones lurch out of reach; a spectral voice, desperate choirs of prayer. The hopeful melody finds nothing to latch onto; The basslines are sparse and percussive, picking up the slack of infrequent and understated percussion. All of this combines to emanate a haunting tranquillity, a feeling of waking up from a slumber to find the world desolate and ravaged.

‘BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD’ begins with a storm rolling in, crackling and roaring as it appears over the horizon. The guitars reverberate in long trails as though they were foghorns beckoning from out at sea. That comfort you feel when you watch a storm from inside – where it can’t touch you – envelops you. Gale-force effects manipulation and cymbals thunder far out from shore. That separation is ripped away from under you as the drums approach, the first subtle drops of rain, bass providing a constant weather alert and bellowing distorted guitars are bolts of lightning, crashing like missiles from God. Tremolo picked lead lines soar like an angel’s elegy, before they fall out and are continued by gorgeous strings. A momentary lull follows. The weather breaks to catch its breath before the lightning starts stronger than before, the drums stirring and the strings rising to match their venom. An inescapable sense of awe overtakes you as every instrument falls into place and combines to create a maelstrom, the natural world triumphant in its ultimate power. There’s a sort of peace in knowing that no matter what destruction or evil mankind does, the elements are omnipotent. This track is among my favourites in a catalogue that I’d be hard-pressed to find a fault in.

‘RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD’ follows, with gentle atmospherics interrupted by trumpeting melodies corrupted by distortion. What follows is a paralysing spectacle, like bombs colliding in the sky and exploding in a sort of oppressive fireworks display. The rhythm section marches forward with a frenetic pace, the drums pounding the track into constant movement. As the ordnance pyrotechnics stop, a voice appears through the smoke for a short broadcast. As the band builds up a head of steam once again, the smoke is pushed away by gusts of air from the drums stomping back to life. Bassist Mauro Pezzente lays down a melodic line that allows the guitarists to wail and grind out an all-consuming chaos. As the crescendo nears the end, the track gets more and more gnarled and feral until it crashes out into quiet feedback.

‘BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL’ holds a similar feeling to ‘Dead Flag Blues’ from the band’s debut, F♯ A♯ ∞. It’s like wandering around a wasteland, every building collapsed in on itself and smoke rising from within. After the intensity and movement of the last two tracks, having a chance to catch your breath and sit with the weight of this song is appreciated. The doomy bass notes that punctuate the end of this track interrupting the eerie peace. The song acts as a precursor to the following ‘PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS’, in which the drums boom out into the waiting expanse.

As the bass climbs, given upward momentum by the drums, the track nears the peak of its grandeur. A tremolo lead and rattling percussion announce the arrival of the song’s satanic majesty, sinister undercurrents writhing under the skin. The strings add a sense of scale to the whole thing, an air of importance that it would feel lacking in without. ‘PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS’ slithers, hissing and pulsating as it does. It’s closing minute sees it peter out, guitar on the balancing on the knife-edge of feedback before falling forward into final song ‘GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS’

I think it’s this track that really surmises the ethos of NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD and GY!BE as a whole. In the wake of destruction and death there is triumph and hope. The word HOPE appears on the band’s hammer logo, on the film projections that show behind them at gigs and is a feeling that radiates from their music. This track’s title suggests life – green chutes/shoots – flourishing in the remains of what we’ve reduced to ash. There is a wistful but overall optimistic tone to this last song, weeping strings evoking loss after the song has provided a call to arms with one last crescendo. That rousing summit that appears early on the track feels like life returning to the empty homes of ‘SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS’, teeming with life and a nascent incandescence. The strings that carry the track to its final moments are that new life coalescing in a mournful congregation in memory of the horror that preceded it.

This is an album that sees GY!BE once again take up their roles as a punk orchestra playing out the implosion of the military-industrial complex. They are at once cataclysmic and deeply inspiring. Godspeed has a discography that in my eyes doesn’t have a single blemish, and on this record, they’ve managed it again. In a time where turning on the news comes with the unfurling of a fresh tragedy, a record coming bathed in soot, debris and a constant stench of gunpowder but carrying the flag of a better world is one that I sorely needed, especially from a band I consider among my favourites. NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD is another classic in a career of essential albums.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024, 28,340 DEAD – Out 4 October 2024 (Constellation)

RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS (youtube.com)