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

That Godspeed You! Black Emperor announced two weeks ago that their decade-long recording hiatus was over came as something of a pleasant surprise. That 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! is not just a worthy addition to their oeuvre, but quite possibly its pinnacle, is almost inconceivable. Yet, somehow, the esoteric Canadian post-rock act that produced 2000's genre-defining double-disc classic Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven have found a new level of intensity on a release that's both their most focused and expansive.

It helps that album number four sees their slow-build-then-explode approach deployed with some of the most memorable melodies of their career. Opener Mladic, for example, is a typically labyrinthine exploration that threatens to take off several times before a circular seven-chord progression finally rains down the fires of hell three-quarters of the way through its 20 minute run-time. Drums thunder, guitars roar, violins cry – it's truly momentous stuff from an ensemble for whom 'epic' has always seemed an inadequate descriptor.

The dronescapes of Their Helicopters' Sing provide brief respite from the fury, which arrives once more in the form of We Drift Like Worried Fire. Cut from the same vaguely sinister cloth as Mladic, it moves from desolation into triumph and back again, before Strung Like Lights Thee Printemps Erable drops its payload of paranoia and sends you back into the world.

Like all good art, 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! can be enjoyed as pure spectacle, or as a search for something deeper. While some may discover hope for the salvation of mankind's consumption-driven malaise in the band's post-apocalyptic vistas, others will be just as satisfied to close their eyes and let GY!BE's perfect storm engulf them. And long may it continue to rage.