Album Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress

For instrumental and post-rock fans, the arrival of a new Godspeed LP is always cause for celebration, hype and hesitation.

Will the group continue their unparalleled dominance over the genre? How high can crescendos really go? Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress is the band’s first single-record album since its 1997 inception (on vinyl), and the succinct nature is obvious from the first notes. Little time is spent easing the listener into the sonics before booming guitar, violin and, for the first time in a long time, a gorgeously soaring horn section, establish that yes, this is a Godspeed record. As the band have established with live renditions of this album, a long-form piece called Behemoth, crescendos are less important here than textural explorations of distortion, noise and feelings lost between dread and hope.

As the record moves forward, experimental drones and sustained tones come to the fore – in a very real and non-throwaway manner. Indeed, Lambs’ Breath wouldn’t be too alien on a modern day Sunn O))) record. It’s to the band’s great strength that they can channel this sonic palette into something outside of a typically oppressive landscape and into something hopeful, if still haunting.

While the length, a neat 40 minutes, may leave some fans wanting more, the album stands alone as one wonderful piece of experimental, droning and beautiful music. Godspeed have never before sounded both so hopeful and so introspectively depressing. This may not be Godspeed’s finest record, but it is still one of the best releases of 2015.