Allelujah! Dont Bend! Ascend!

Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s first proper LP in forever is either a rallying cry released on the cusp of a contentious election cycle or a return to form with the forward momentum of a runaway train. The band of post-rock pioneers certainly isn\'t subtle on *Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!*. As you might imagine, given how…uplifting!…that!…title!…is!, Godspeed’s fourth studio album is heady but hopeful, with an ominous but non-overbearing mood that sounds like the collective’s secular take on a tent revival. With REALLY loud guitars. And divebombing drums. And strings that are plucked, slapped, and sideswiped. Of the two 20-minute pieces here, “Mladic” is the one you might not wanna play at midnight, what with the way it bursts through your speakers screaming after just a few minutes. “We Drift Like Worried Fire,” on the other hand, raises its fists to the heavens while showing the group’s many disciples how instrumental melodrama is done. As for the record’s other pair of tracks, they’re both riff-raking meditations on the Power of the Drone. Guess GY!BE wasn\'t kidding about that whole *Ascend!* thing.

These are the first new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor since 2002. Featuring two twenty-minute slabs of epic instrumental rock music and two six-and-a-half minute drones, ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! provides soaring, shining proof of the band’s powerful return to form.
 Having emerged from hiatus at the end of 2010, GYBE picked up right where they left off, immediately re-capturing the sound and material that had fallen dormant in 2003 and driving it forward with every show of their extensive touring over the last 18 months. The new album presents the fruits of that labour: evolved and definitive versions of two huge compositions previously known to fans as “Albanian” and “Gamelan”, now properly titled as “MLADIC” and “WE DRIFT LIKE WORRIED FIRE” respectively. Accompanied by the new drones (stitched into the album sequence on CD; cut separately on their own 7″ for the LP version), GYBE have offered up a fifth album that we feel is as absolutely vital, virulent, honest and heavy as anything in their discography.
 
We don’t have much time for mythology, but we’d be lying if we said the return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2010 didn’t signify a whole lot to us as a marker from which to look back on the past decade, to reflect on what’s been gained or lost within the confines of independent music culture and what’s been gained or lost in the socio-political landscape writ large. Godspeed’s music will do that to you. It is music that bears witness to, channels and transforms this predominantly terrible, infuriating, venal and nihilistically sad story we’re all living, sharing, resisting, protesting, deconstructing and trying to change for the better. We think GYBE has once again provided a uniquely moving and compelling soundtrack for these acts of analysis, defiance and ascension. * * * Hard to believe a full decade has passed since the release of Yanqui U.X.O., the last album by GYBE. Never a band to care for conventional industry wisdom, Yanqui was released shortly before xmas 2003 with little publicity and no press availability, no marketing plans or cross-promotions or brand synergies, with back cover artwork tracing the inextricable links between major music labels and the military-industrial complex. Driven by word-of-mouth from a passionate and committed fanbase galvanized by the group's sonic vision and its dedication to unmediated, unsullied musical communication, the album found it's rightful audience. To suggest that such simple principles and goals have become harder to maintain and enact a decade later is an understatement. For all the contents and discontents – for all the "content" – of our present cultural moment, the idea of circumventing the glare of exposure, the massaging of media cycles and the calculus of identity management appears quaint, if not futile. But Godspeed is looking to try all the same. The band wants people to care about this new album, without telling people they should or talking about themselves. They want to hold on to some part of that energy that comes with the thrill of anonymous discovery and unmediated transmission, knowing full well that these days, anti-strategy risks being tagged as a strategy, non-marketing framed as its opposite, and deeply held principles they consider fundamental to health as likely to be interpreted as just another form of stealth. Truly, thanks for being open to hearing it.

Two weeks ago came the surprise announcement of a new album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, their first in 10 years. If they felt like a band of the moment around the turn of the millennium, now, in a time of rapid cultural turnover and bite-sized music consumption, Godspeed feel out of step in a very necessary way.

The only justifiable excuse for a 10-year gap in output from Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be the release of a 10-years-long Godspeed You! Black Emperor song. Sadly, the lengthiest track on ’Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! lasts a paltry 20 minutes. Not that the instrumental post-rock ensemble is slacking on its…

A Godspeed reinvigorated, imbued with their best spirit, and driven by optimism.

Let’s talk about what’s happened in dramatic, instrumental-heavy rock (some might call it post rock) in the 10 years since…

Check out our album review of Artist's Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! on Rolling Stone.com.

Beauty emerging from clatter and chaos, and at times it has moments of transcendental bliss.

Of all the suspiciously frequent band reunions taking place over the past few years, elusive Canadian post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor's reactivation in 2010 seemed to top everyone's list for most unexpected. In typically low-key fashion, the group released this fourth offering out of nowhere at a show in Boston on October 1st, almost neatly a decade after previous effort Yanqui U.X.O.

To someone who recently discovered Godspeed You! Black Emperor, care of the Montreal-based post-rock collective's first album in ten years,...

With thoughtfully crafted compositions so carefully rendered, Godspeed You! Black Emperor plays like a massed force that could show its mighty strength at any time.

Montreal's premier apocalyptic instrumental outfit pick up where they left off 10 years ago, writes <strong>Kitty Empire</strong>

‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! translates decade-old live material into a sprawling, four-movement storm.

The first thing that any review of the new album by Godspeed You! Black Emperor will mention is the wait.

There couldn't have been a better time for Canadian post-rock legendaries Godspeed You! Black Emperor to come back than the conclusion of 2012.

Montreal's post-rock collective return after 10 years with their apocalyptic sonic powers fully intact, writes <strong>Dom Lawson</strong>

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! review: At a time where post-rock is more a joke than a reputable genre, Godspeed You! Black Emperor return from Valhalla to show the world how it's done.