Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GYBE) returns with its first single LP-length release since the group's earliest days in 1997-99. 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' clocks in at a succinct 40:23 and is arguably the most focused and best-sounding recording of the band's career. Working with sound engineer Greg Norman (Electrical Audio) at studios in North Carolina and Montreal, GYBE slowly and steadily put the new album together through late 2013 and 2014, emerging with a mighty slab of superlative sonics, shot through with all the band's inimitable signposts and touchstones: huge unison riffage, savage noise/drone, oscillating overtones, guitar vs. string counterpoint, inexorable crescendos and scorched-earth transitions. Following Godspeed's return from a long hiatus at the end of 2010 to begin playing live shows again, and with the hugely acclaimed 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! release in 2012 marking their first new release in a decade, the group continued to perform regularly on their own headlining tours (and as headliners at many leading festivals), often including a new multi-movement piece in concert over the past couple of years. Known to fans and through live show recordings by the sobriquet "Behemoth", GYBE has gradually distilled this new work down to a fastidious and uncompromising essence in the studio, with the swing-time swagger of the opening unison riff in "Peasantry or 'Light! Inside of Light!'" giving way to increasing microtonal divergences and an exhilarating immersion in the harmonic power of massed amplified instruments, before collapsing into some of the most visceral and unalloyed noise/drone the band has yet committed to tape on "Lambs' Breath" and "’Asunder, Sweet'”. The album closes with "Piss Crowns Are Trebled", a classic 14-minute piece of vintage Godspeed, where ascending and descending guitar and violin melodies intertwine over gut-rattling distorted bass in 3/4 time, segueing into a pummeling four-on-the-floor series of sparkling, soaring crescendos 'Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress' finds Godspeed in top form; a sterling celebration of the band's awesome dialectic, where composition, emotion and 'note-choice' is inextricable from an exacting focus on tone, timbre, resonance and the sheer materiality of sound. The album is available on 180 gram vinyl in a gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeve and insert poster, on CD in a 100% recycled custom paperboard jacket, and on all manner of formats in our fractured digital marketplace. Thanks for listening.
Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is the first album of truly new material Godspeed You! Black Emperor have released since reforming after their long hiatus. The album is Godspeed to its core, moving from thin drones to Wagnerian pomp and circumstance and back again over long, patient stretches.
It’s easy to be put off by the punctuation in an Efrim Menuck release. Exclamation points abound, haphazardly strewn throughout his work in both Godspeed You! Black Emperor and prolific side project Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra (who else would write a song called “Sisters! Brothers! Small Boats Of Fire Are…
Godspeed return with the shroud of mystery long gone, and with their first new material in years. Something's changed – is it the band, or is it Mike Copus?
Like with 2012’s ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend, Ascend, fans know the music on Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s latest LP, Asunder,…
The four pieces that make up the suite-like Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress, have evolved from an earlier live incarnation of the work, known to fans as "Behemoth," which was excessive even by Godspeed You!
Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is slim but huge, and tests the GYBE aesthetic with courageous enterprise.
Godspeed's taste for pageantry has not left them, though they have, on this LP, left some of the spectacle behind. None of the spoken word t...
Godspeed You! Black Emperor may be the first instrumental rock band with an almost anthropomorphic career arc.
Godspeed’s sixth album is a resolute, defiant work full of angry convulsions and devastating drones
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress' review: A thematic and musical awakening for one of the greatest post-rock bands in history.