The alphabet of the titans of the Canadian apocalyptic post-rock.
Recently Godspeed You! Black Emperor has released a new album called “G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!” A good reason to brush up on their discography and visit the Canadian post-rock scene, largely derived from the GY! BE overcoat. It is a guide to the band’s universe – through their main posts, numerous side projects, covers and memes.
F♯A♯∞ (1997)
The debut album begins with a monologue: “The car is on fire and there is no driver behind the wheel, the gutters are filled with thousands of lonely suicides, and a dark wind is blowing.” A series of gloomy images, coupled with an alarming blurry black and white cover, set the tone for both the album and the entire career of the band: get ready, it will be loud, it will be sad, it will be scary, it will be epic.
At F♯A♯∞, the group immediately showed itself in all its glory: lingering guitars, mourning strings, funeral march drums, looped ambient, the hum of trains, someone’s voices and a general feeling of impending collapse.
Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada (1999)
GY! BE’s second official recording has been running for almost half an hour. By the band’s standards, this is, of course, an EP – for example, the song “Providence” from the previous album alone lasts longer. Against this background, the 11-minute jingling waltz “Moya”, named after the band’s guitarist Michael Moya, seems unusually laconic.
Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! (2012)
The return of GY! BE turned out to be triumphant: the group released the most relevant disc for the apocalyptic 2012 and even received the prestigious Canadian Polaris Music Prize for it (however, the musicians did not come to the awards ceremony, and the money was given to the musical education of prisoners).
On this album, the band found a format in which the next couple of albums would be sustained: two epic tracks and two drone interludes. The explosive composition “Mladic” became a shock moment, where GY! BE unexpectedly intertwined Balkan motives into their harsh sound.