Magnificent. Harrowing. Important. There is so much to be said about this album yet it should be left to speak for itself. There were 28,340 dead as of February 13th 2024. Three days before the anniversary of the genocide, the day Godspeed You! Black Emperor released the album, the number of dead had reached nearly 42,000. It only continues to climb.
Montreal group Godspeed You! Black Emperor channel their raw anger and grief into this haunting yet uplifting six-track, one-hour-long album. It airily floats and violently sinks, balancing feelings of despair and emptiness with solemn elegy and glimmers of liberation. Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s usual flurries of crashing crescendos mirror the grief and pain of the thousands of unheard screams lost within one colossal, ever-climbing statistic.
AS OF NOVEMBER 16 2024: US HAS PROVIDED $17.9 BILLION TO FUND GENOCIDE
“SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS” emits a drone and echoed whispers of screams that lead into a triumphant salute to the martyred. The guitar that begins the commemoration disturbingly brings to mind Jimi Hendrix’s feedback-drenched 1969 performance of “Star Spangled Banner,” itself an ode to the song’s beauty and a protest of the country it represents. Joined by choruses of drums and guitars, and an eerie, quivering harmonica, it provides transport to memories of once vibrant communities now laid to waste.
84 of 132 PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CENTERS OUT OF SERVICE
“BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” continues the image left behind by the previous track, melting villages and towns into desolate landscapes devoid of life. Muffled explosions introduce mournful guitars that pair with uptempo percussion to create a catharsis that violently tears any emotional dam that may have existed away. Feel the pain and guilt, let it act as fuel, and don’t cave in.
AS OF NOVEMBER 15 2024: 137 JOURNALISTS KILLED SINCE WAR BEGAN
“RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” whispers with the chirps of birds or the whistles of falling lead that quietly lead into driving strings and drums. They support a warhead of a guitar to begin the album’s 2nd straight 13-minute song, building into a cacophonic waterfall before falling away into the only lyrical segment of the album. The poem read in Spanish by Michelle Fiedler Fuentes reads:
raindrops cast in lead
our side lit up
then put out and buried and extinguished
underneath the perfect sun
underneath the body falling from the sky
they were martyrs falling
because on our side they were martyrs since before we were even born
the women who tried and were killed for trying
the women who died young, furious, or old, and never saw the sunrise
innocents and children and the tiny bodies that laughed, and were put to sleep forever
and never saw the beauty of the sunrise
Then it continues, running through rubble and past screams, dodging shrapnel and hopelessness, flying toward liberation and life. An echoing guitar leads it out of the chaos, dissolving into the sound of ringing ears.
“BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL” gives way to the hopelessness lurking behind these tracks. The shortest song stacks weeping strings over darkly menacing bass, painting the ongoing apocalypse. A mournful drum and a quiet wail fade in and out, transitioning into
“PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS” builds on the previous track’s despair, adding harrowing guitar and exploding into raw fear. Words cannot describe the sound of the track’s toiling bells and malicious guitars, but neither can they describe the atrocities they reflect.
“GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS” begins as an epic finale whose crashing choruses weave between hopeless and hopeful, fighting the inescapable feeling of dread that has hung in the air for now over a year. The second half gives way to mournful guitar and strings, symbolizing an ending that has still not arrived. This is the album’s sole pitfall as it seems to scream so powerfully until it sputters out when the devastation it grapples with has not yet ended.
AS OF NOVEMBER 16 2024 OVER 44,000 DEAD.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s “NO TITLE AS OF FEBRUARY 13 2024 28,340 DEAD” evokes the feelings we as spectators can no longer avoid when confronted with this massacre. It’s hard not to feel helpless and unable to do anything about what happens overseas when we watch from behind our screens and in the safety of our homes. However, even though we may not be able to do anything physically, there is still so much we can do from our places of privilege. This project proves that we can make a difference and it asks anyone who might lend an ear to empathize and heed the band’s call to action. So donate, rally those around you, and make art, not war.
A message from Godspeed You! Black Emperor:
THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.
NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall; what context?; what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.
GY!BE
Ways to help:
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