• Consequence
  • Music
  • Film
  • TV
  • Heavy
Menu Consequence
Menu Shop Search Newsletter
  • News
  • Reviews
  • Features
  • Live
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
Advertisement
  • Reviews
  • Album Reviews

Album Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

C+

Artists

  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Advertisement
Jeremy D. Larson
October 17, 2012 | 8:00am ET

    Maybe we weren’t hearing them clearly enough 10 years ago. Maybe we’re still trapped in the ruined machine on the back artwork to F#A#(infinity). Maybe none of us made molotov cocktails even though we were given explicit instructions on how to do so on the back artwork to Slow Riot For New Zerø Kanada. Maybe we still buy records from AOL/Time-Warner, BMG, Sony, and Vivendi Universal — the same four record companies the band flowcharted to the military industrial complex 10 years ago on the the back artwork to Yanqui U.X.O. The time for simply lifting your skinny fists to heaven has passed. Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! offers fewer catharses, fewer emotions, and fewer answers, putting more distance than ever between Godspeed You! Black Emperor (self-debased on this album as “God’s Pee”) and the listener. It’s blurry in the distance and surrounded by noise, not unlike its front artwork. As for this album’s back artwork? A poem:

    WRECK’D US OUR COUNTRIE’S AMOK
    TORN THRU
    WITH BIRDS THEE SKY’S A BRUIS’D UNRECKONING
    THEE SHORE’S BLED DRY BUT TEPID WATERS.
    to bury the lead in trebl’d hiss, thatch the following –

    BUCKET-WIRE

    DUNG     GOD’S PEE
    (decant – incant – reacant)

    OUR CITIES’ GRACE AND PAIN
    A STINKIN’ WIND – A PLAGUE OF POLICEMEN
    AND
    OUR DREAMS, ALIT, STINKING IN THE HARBOUR
    THEE ONLOOKERS STARE
    ‘ALLELUJAH!      DON’T BEND       ASCEND.

    So, yes: Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! is another political record from the Montreal band, and it’s the band’s most political record not just by way of contextual elbow-jabs but also musical aesthetics. It’s Brechtian in its staging of ideas, detached and performative without the populist rising and falling action of their formative post-rock years. Instead of peaks and valleys, the now eight-person ensemble uses a flat drone as abrasion and meditation as a means of connection. Where there was fear and foreboding in their earlier works — music fit for the climax of a movie —  Ascend! feels like the end credits of hopelessness of 10 years of continuous failures, and a last attempt to guilt slacktivisits to be an agent of political change. It’s most effective political rock album since Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor. 

    This puts the album in a unique and frustrating place, because as ancient as Allelujah! sounds, as visceral as the recordings are, the whole soul of the record is roped off like a special museum installation. It feels didactic, and occasionally monotonous — which, when creating an album centered around drone is really the last thing you want to have happen. Experimentalists like La Monte Young or Oren Ambarchi play with drones as a way of connection, a magnet to an unknown place that can exist within your subconscious, pulling you into an abyss. The work it takes to let Allelujah! pull you to that place of transcendence — that place where “Bbf3” and “East Hastings” could whisk you off to so easily — is at times Sisyphean.

    Advertisement
    Related Video

    Two 20 minute pillars hold the album up, each more aggressive and lush than anything the band has recorded previously. The first, “Mladic”,swells and distends at a glacial pace, until two guitars mimic the sound of crows cawing overhead. It’s a beautiful shift out of the drone stream at 6:45, when the first key-change comes in, and a groove starts to form in that Middle Eastern modality. The song stays in the red, eventually locking in to a Sleep meets Swans full-throttle fortissimo.

    The final movement to the other 20 minute behemoth ”We Drift Like Worried Fire” locks into Neu! meets The Joy Formidable full-throttle fortissimo too, but the problem with both of these tracks is that there’s no good plot or supporting scenes to support all the Explosions in the Sky. It’s like a Stravinsky score played without a conductor — the forms of the songs are misshapen and odd, the music obtuse and barbed, keeping out any sort of easy emotional resonance that could accrue if only something was shaping it. That chaos is certainly affecting, but it’s the fury of everything so much on to the page without precision, all tense and anxious, rough sketches of ideas that loop back and land limp.

    The two younger cousins of these pieces, “The Helicopter’s Sing” and “Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable”, don’t use their noise drone aesthetic as respite, refueling, or recontextualizing, but rather as waiting-room music for a dramatic thread that struggles to present itself. A bagpipe bleats, a violin is attacked, and it’s ominous and bleak like a Sunn O))) low-hz B-side. Where the pair should offer something other than interesting texture, they’re more masking tape than anything else.

    Advertisement

    But that’s what’s really great about these pieces. Allelujah!’s defiance of strictures of classic post-rock cinematic crescendos, or extended kraut-rock grooves, or popular musical modes and tonalities are what makes it work more as political album than it does as a traditional emotional one. With no overt anarcho-syndicalist rants or post-apocalyptic fatalism channeled through interstitial beat poetry from Blase Bailey Finnegan III like on Lift Your Skinny Fists like Attenas to Heaven, or brow-beating metaphors like “The car is on fire and there’s no driver at the wheel” that introduced F#A#[infinity], the music itself becomes the message.

    “Someone asks us what the thing we made means, we say figure it out for yourself, the clues are all there,” said the band in a recent interview. Ratko Mladic was arrested last year for his part in the genocide of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in the mid ’90s, over 400,000 people took to the streets of Montreal to protest a 75% tuition increase proposed by the Quebec Cabinet in what was referred to as Printemps érable, or “Maple Spring”. There’s not just concrete clues like the song titles, the back cover art, and a little note inside: “Fuck Le Plan Nord. Fuck La Loi 78. Montreal Right Now Forever.” It’s all clues, loud and electrified. GY!BE dare you to personalize the brambly politics of the music, and on Allelujah!, they’re finally very, very clear on that point.

    Essential Tracks: “We Drift Like Worried Fire”, ”The Helicopter’s Sing”

    Advertisement

    Feature artwork by Cap Blackard:

     

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit

Artists

  • Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Sign up for updates

Subscribe to our email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.

Advertisement

Popular Stories

metallica virginia tech enter sandman

Heavy Consequence

Virginia Tech Students Sing Metallica's "Enter Sandman" After NCAA Bans It from Being Played: Watch

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band circa 2023

Music

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Announce New Tour Dates in the US, Canada [UPDATED]

Advertisement

Shop for GWAR's Bud of Gods Delta-8 and Sour OG vape cartridges

Shop for GWAR's Bud of Gods Delta-8 and Sour OG vape cartridges

AW Lana Del Rey

Features

Lana Del Rey Provokes But Does Not Explain on Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd: Review

hometowns of consequence nominations favoriate best music venues local independent concerts contest voting

Editorials

Introducing Hometowns of Consequence, Celebrating the Local Music Venues That Make Culture Happen

Latest Stories

AW Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey Provokes But Does Not Explain on Did you know that there's a tunnel under Ocean Blvd: Review

March 22, 2023

yves tumor album review praise for a lord who chews but does not consume

Yves Tumor Ascends to Rock Godhood with New Album Praise a Lord Who Chews...: Review

March 17, 2023

miley cyrus endless summer vacation review album

With Endless Summer Vacation, Miley Cyrus Glows on a Vocal-Forward Tour of the California Coast

March 10, 2023

pink trustfall album review

With TRUSTFALL, P!NK Is as Personal as Ever, But Takes No Risks

February 17, 2023

Desire I Want to Turn Into You review

Caroline Polachek's Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is an Enchanting Pop Masterpiece

February 14, 2023

this is why review

On This Is Why, Paramore Fight for the Present Moment

February 10, 2023

gorillaz cracker island

Eight Albums in, The Gorillaz Universe Is Still Expanding

February 7, 2023

shania twain album review

With Queen of Me, Shania Twain Continues Her Reign as the Ruler of Country-Pop

February 2, 2023

Advertisement

News

  • Music
  • New Music
  • Album Streams
  • Upcoming Releases
  • Tours
  • Film
  • TV
  • Pop Culture

Reviews

  • Music Reviews
  • Film Reviews
  • TV Reviews
  • Concert Reviews
  • Festival Reviews

Features

  • Editorials
  • Interviews
  • Cover Stories
  • Lists
  • Guides
  • CoSign
  • Song of the Week

Live

  • Tickets
  • Festival News
  • Tour Dates
  • Photo Galleries
  • Music Instruments & Gear

Heavy

  • News
  • Interviews
  • Concerts

More

  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Wellness
  • Giveaways

Other sites

  • Heavy Consequence
  • Consequence Media
  • Modern Drummer
  • About
  • Privacy policy
  • Advertising
  • Work For Us
  • Terms
  • Contact
  • Copyright
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Download our app

  • Get it on the App Store
  • Get it on Google Play
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitch
  • Tiktok
Consequence
Current story

Album Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Menu Shop Search Newsletter
Consequence
News
  • News
  • Music
  • New Music
  • Album Streams
  • Upcoming Releases
  • Tours
  • Film
  • TV
  • Pop Culture
Reviews
  • Music Reviews
  • Film Reviews
  • TV Reviews
  • Concert Reviews
  • Festival Reviews
Features
  • All Features
  • Editorials
  • Interviews
  • Cover Stories
  • Lists
  • Guides
  • CoSign
  • Song of the Week
Live
  • Tickets
  • Festival News
  • Tour Dates
  • Photo Galleries
  • Music Instruments & Gear
Podcasts
  • The Opus
  • Kyle Meredith With...
  • Stanning BTS
  • The Story Behind the Song
  • The What
  • Going There with Dr. Mike
  • The Rome and Duddy Show
Videos
  • Interviews
  • Two for the Road
  • First Time I Heard
  • When I Made
  • Battle of the Bandmates
  • Peer 2 Peer
  • Essays
  • Fan Theories
Heavy
  • News
  • Interviews
  • Concerts
  • Premieres
  • Culture
  • Beyond the Boys Club
  • Mining Metal
Shop
  • Shop
  • Giveaways

Follow Consequence

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitch
  • Tiktok
Close
Close
 

Loading Comments...