Band:	Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Album:	"No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead"
Style:	Post-rock
Release date:	October 04, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Sun Is A Hole Sun Is Vapors
02. Babys In A Thundercloud
03. Raindrops Cast In Lead
04. Broken Spires At Dead Kapital
05. Pale Spectator Takes Photographs
06. Grey Rubble - Green Shoots

I've been putting off this review for quite a long while because of how much this entire thing fills me with dread.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor is one of my favorite bands of all time, and actually a pretty strong candidate for the top position. I have, numerous times, called F♯ A♯ ∞ my favorite album of all time, and that's a position I still consider to hold true. Luciferian Towers, underwhelming as I found it, was my fifth review as an official writer for the website. In my review of the follow-up, G_d's Pee At State's End!, I called the band the one I wish to see live before all others, and in the meantime I have gotten to experience that, and their performance in Köln that I attended before last year's Roadburn is among my most cherished memories. With all that said, it should be clear as day that I'd jump at the opportunity to talk about their new music. Well, if they were a band like any other, sure.

Even if this was just an album like any other, just the fact that it was by my favorite band fills me with dread knowing the expectations I'd place upon myself covering it. But Godspeed You! Black Emperor never do music for music's sake, and with an album with a title like "No Title As Of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead", they make it impossible to genuinely engage with it as a music album without also engaging with the political context that it is referring to. The band has never been shy about their anarchist politics, but it was much easier to just place the dystopia of F♯ A♯ ∞ or "Rockets Fall On Rocket Falls" from Yanqui U.X.O. in the foreground as a more general feeling rather than something specific. Even their most political album beforehand, Luciferian Towers, with titles like "Bosses Hang" and "Anthem For No State", and whose press release included demands like "the total dismantling of the prison-industrial complex" still left enough wiggle room to not engage with its political content because it was still general enough. How could it not fill me with dread knowing I cannot talk about the album while ignoring the very very specific human rights disaster that its title very very flashily hints at.

Knowing how the comment section of the much more general political GY!BE record review turned out, a huge deal of the dread was the anticipation that, because of how direct this album is, it's gonna be an awful time for everyone involved. And for what? My review won't change what's happening. Any comments won't change what's happening. Not even Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or for that matter any artist, can change what's happening. The people who can do something about it won't be reached by this, and they don't care anyway. I'm not the victim here for having to potentially get into discussions with people online. I'll go on about my life, just slightly more anxious than usual. Others don't have that luxury.

In my G_d's Pee At State's End! review, I mentioned how even though the album seemed tied to the context of its existence, namely the pandemic and its associated lockdown, it was still easy to detach from that and reach towards a universal feeling. I find that more difficult this time around, mostly because that album's context did feel like something you could anticipate as temporary, and now the lockdown feels like a distant memory. I wonder how someone discovering this album tens of decades from now will relate to its context. I simply can't say for sure. But within the album itself, there is a general feeling that permeates an anticipation for it, and it is hope. For as grim of a subject, it doesn't feel bleaker than anything they've done, and even though hope was always at least partly within the band's emotional palette, the way it appears here it's almost provocative.

The scales being tipped towards feeling hopeful and triumphant and the lack of samples is something I criticized Luciferian Towers for, so seeing that same thing represented in but working unbelievably well. It would be too simple to explain it as the sound of G_d's Pee At State's End! in the mould of Luciferian Towers, especially since there's little that compares to the urgency of "Pale Spectator Takes Photographs" and the bleakness of the interlude track before it, which contrasts quite heavily with how groovy and triumphant the climax of "Raindrops Cast In Lead" felt just some minutes prior. Having the record be structured around three long crescendo-centered epics, each with their own distinct feel, but each feeling very much in line with Godspeed You! Black Emperor's sound does make for a very rewarding listen. At least as far as, you know, the music is concerned.