Quebecois post rock demigods Godspeed You! Black Emperor are known for making songs that are weird, long, and loud. While this is plainly seen in all of their works, it’s perhaps best demonstrated by their 2015 album, Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress, which for many years was performed at live shows as one single song, unofficially called “Behemoth.”
Caught on tape here for the first time (and their first album of new studio material in thirteen years) Asunder is a tour de force that showcases all of the project’s various indulgences.
Despite being featured as one song live, there are three distinct movements, which are split into four tracks (the second, more ambient movement is divided in two, with a locked groove at the end of side one). The first movement, here called “Peasantry, or ‘Light Inside of Light!’” is as straightforward as they get, playing a string-section-assisted heavy metal riff on a Middle Eastern scale. It’s colossally heavy, lumbering across a near-eleven minute runtime with brooding meditation. That collapses, its reverberations slipping into “Lamb’s Breath,” a ten minute drone track with a few splashes of noise here and there.
“Asunder, Sweet” continues the drone movement, blips percussing in the humming feedback which swells with squealing strings. It rises to a fever pitch before the drums finally return at the beginning of “Piss Crowns Are Trebled,” the closing movement. And while this track only accounts for thirteen of the album’s forty minutes, it contains the most compositional movement. The guitars retreat from their droning and play a melody, joined by strings and keyboards as the song builds. The motif shifts a few times, the lead melody trading between electric guitars and violins, a distorted bass guitar playing long, sustained notes (I can’t tell if it’s an eBow or a fuzz pedal feeding back).
Halfway through the track, the noisier, more dissonant elements fall apart and give way to what sounds like a proper tune. There are chord changes and a clear melody—it’s almost hopeful, and practically cinematic (which is a word that many post rock bands find attached to them, but rarely Godspeed). This proves a short detour however, as the band returns to a minor key and precedes to play another melody as if they’re trying to burn the studio down with it. Guitars, strings, and keys play in unison for several bars before diverting into divergent countermelodies and competing lead lines. The drums quicken the rhythm ever so slightly, moving accents closer and closer together until the snare beats every pulse. Then, it all crashes down. The cymbals give one mighty clang, and everything collapses into another minute or so of sustained orchestra drone.
Nothing here sounds foreign to listeners familiar with Godspeed. Their seminal hit Lift Your Skinny Fists had all of these same tricks up its proverbial sleeves. But somehow, Asunder uses those same sonic turns and makes an album that is almost…accessible? That’s not to say this isn’t a bizarre record, but this harnesses their weirdness in a way that’s as close to casually palatable as they’ve ever done. It’s weird, violent, and unforgiving, but it’s as focused a statement as they’ve ever made. And after over a decade of hiatus, just finding their voice without slipping into self-parody would be a triumph.