Luciferian Towers
More than 20 years into their career, the silhouette of symphonic post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor remains as unmistakable as ever: tentative wisps of sound that build to heights of almost agonizing glory. Following the thread of 2012’s relatively optimistic *Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!*, *Luciferian Towers* is a volcanic, inspiring album with hints of Near Eastern music (“Undoing a Luciferian Towers”), Irish wake ballads (“Bosses Hang, Pt. I”), and psychedelia beamed in from an imaginary Western (“Anthem for No State, Pt. III”)—a cross-cultural portrait of music as an expression of hope and resistance.
this, this long-playing record, a thing we made in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. eyes up and filled with dreadful joy – we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a quiet muttering amplified heavenward. we recorded it all in a burning motorboat. (context as follows:) 1. UNDOING A LUCIFERIAN TOWERS – look at that fucking skyline! big lazy money writ in dull marble obelisks! imagine all those buildings much later on, hollowed out and stripped bare of wires and glass, listen- the wind is whistling through all 3,000 of its burning window-holes! 2. BOSSES HANG – labor, alienated from the wealth it creates, so that holy cow, most of us live precariously! kicking at it, but barely hanging on! also – the proud illuminations of our shortened lives! also – more of us than them! also – what we need now is shovels, wells, and barricades! 3. FAM / FAMINE – how they kill us = absentee landlord, burning high-rise. the loud panics of child-policemen and their exploding trigger-hands. with the dull edge of an arbitrary meritocracy. neglect, cancer maps, drone strike, famine. the forest is burning and soon they’ll hunt us like wolves. 4. ANTHEM FOR NO STATE – kanada, emptied of its minerals and dirty oil. emptied of its trees and water. a crippled thing, drowning in a puddle, covered in ants. the ocean doesn’t give a shit because it knows it’s dying too. finally and in conclusion; the “luciferian towers” L.P. was informed by the following grand demands: + an end to foreign invasions + an end to borders + the total dismantling of the prison-industrial complex + healthcare, housing, food and water acknowledged as an inalienable human right + the expert fuckers who broke this world never get to speak again much love to all the other lost and wondering ones, xoxoxox god’s pee / montréal / 4 juillet, 2017
The sound of Godspeed’s radical fury takes a sideline on their impeccably composed sixth album. It contains their most melodic and powerfully positive-sounding music to date.
Luciferian Towers is the perfect name for a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album, matched only, perhaps, by the title of its 2000 classic Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven. In a way, this new one—the band’s third since reuniting in 2011—feels like a bookend to Lift, in that it’s similarly powerful, but far…
Black Emperor introduced their 2017 full-length Luciferian Towers with a press release containing a number of "grand demands," essentially calling for basic human decency and the end of xenophobia, concluding with an ultimatum that "the expert fuckers who broke this world never get to speak again."
Godspeed You! Black Emperor's apocalyptic vision remains as relevant and powerful as ever on Luciferian Towers.
Again and again, Godspeed You! Black Emperor conjure a rare sort of glorious joy to push back against a world so susceptible to corruption t...
When this record takes off, as it does on the third parts of "Bosses Hang" and later "Anthem For No State," it really takes off.
‘Luciferian Towers’, the third album since Godspeed You! Black Emperor reunited, won't wrong-foot anyone, but certainly is not Godspeed-by-numbers.
Our review of 'Luciferian Towers' by Godspeed You! Black Emperor finds a band at the top of their game.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Luciferian Towers review: A few thousand bosses swinging lazily in the town square.
A fine album of defiantly uncommercial psychedelia from the Canadian oddballs. CD New Music review by Guy Oddy