Weariness — an all too common feeling amongst the people of the world today. It’s found in our politics, in the ever present onslaught of self-concerned government officials with lost connections to the soul of their people. It’s found in Charlottesville, St. Louis, Flint and every other town distorted into a battleground for basic humanity. Most of all, it is found within ourselves — in the daily slog of walking within a world that seems to be falling apart, dividing itself through hate and misunderstanding.
It is within this worldly weariness that Canadian experimental music collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s latest album “Luciferian Towers” entrenches itself, pulling its namesake from the smoldering tragedy of the recent Grenfell Tower fire in London. The album is coated in the muted feelings of fatigue our world inspires, as though it was the grey ashes of Grenfell itself.
A presence of evil and struggle is set immediately by the creeping beginnings of the introductory movement “Undoing a Luciferian Towers,” an intense buildup drawing strongly from Godspeed’s traditional style of post and drone rock. Beginning with only a wavering line of guitar feedback and the faint thumping of a distant drum, the track rapidly swells into a monstrous cacophony of stilted and unsettling sound. Distorted guitars screech jaggedly as whole arrangements of horns and flutes bleat in a whirlwind of sound, as though some great and monstrous evil has risen up and set the world ajar in a crazed panic.
During its last legs, though, the track transcends into a harmony of swooping guitar power chords. These chords overwhelm and drive away the dark chaos of the song’s beginnings, marking the transition into the second movement of the album — “Bosses Hang.”
In stark contrast to the onset of evil which overwhelmed “Towers,” the tripartite “Bosses Hang” puts forth feelings of unadulterated empowerment and triumph. “Pt. 1” allows long, drawn out, lo-fi power chords to take center stage amidst crashing drum strikes, ultimately leading to an unhinged duet of rich strings and striking guitar riffs. “Pt. 2”’ follows suit by employing a steady barrage of energetic violin loops and guitar plucks to create a measured gaining of speed.
This thrusts the movement into “Pt. 3” — a section rife with chugging guitars, steady violin melodies and pumping drums that serve to rocket the movement into a final glorious crescendo. The track then explodes with reckless abandon, throwing out earth-shattering drum crashes and booming power chords into a culmination of victory and emotion. This moving climax leads the listener into the soft arms of “Fam/Famine,” the third movement of “Luciferian Towers.”
“Fam/Famine” is a short yet meaningful section — it captures a mood of exhausted tranquility one can only experience in the fading time after a moment of incredible power and expense. Soft strings introduce the track, wavering in their delivery as though they barely have the strength to lift themselves up. The instrumentation gradually grows into the arms of a wavering and fuzzy guitar section, only to be pushed into climax by a flurry of drum strikes. Yet, for all its satisfaction and expense, the persistent droning of a distant alarm looms ominously in the background — a foreboding sign of struggle yet to come.
Here is where the listener enters that final movement of “Luciferian Towers,” a far darker and solemn anthology simply titled “Anthem for No State.” It is a piece set to underscore the inescapability of society’s creeping inequalities and oppressions. They persist, lurking in the shadows of moments of progress and pride, waiting to seep back in.
“Anthem Pt.1” stands in staunch contrast to all that has come before it, embracing a tone of complete solemnity. An incredibly delicate guitar wavers in and out of focus alongside a softly sobbing violin loop, creating a starkly hollow tone. The track conjures a deserted soundscape with nothing more to show for humanity than an ethereal sample of distant cries in the wind. The nation’s vibrant hopes and pride are left silenced in the face of a return to the evils it once combated.
And so “Anthem Pt. 2” begins to seep its way into focus, carrying with it little more life than its predecessor. With absolute melancholy, a drum progression begins, and its main body is barely audible aside from a single half-hearted strike on its final note. Over this barren beat a single distorted guitar can be heard, groaning like the structure of a collapsing building as it struggles to support the weight of itself. A suffocating depression blankets the track — leaving even the most basic of sounds to feel immensely strenuous.
Yet, in the face of the exhaustion, the world it still stands up yet again to resist. The movement’s final stretch — “Anthem Pt. 3” — echoes this sentiment, as it marks the return of life to the album, though in a form much different than before. Gone is the vibrant, willful triumph of “Bosses Hang” which so powerfully drove away the swirling evil of “Undoing a Luciferian Towers.”
In its place, the listener finds a far more warped and dogged show of resistance, deeply scarred by the pressure and turmoil of the evil it combats. Bagpipes scream out in the track’s beginning, standing defiantly amidst the distorted guitars belting out riff after riff of reckless energy. Drum strikes erupt like bone shattering punches as horn sections pepper the air with blasts of sound. All of these components come together into a swirling vortex of defiant energy climaxing to the sounds of luxurious violins.
An enormous pressure and weight stems from living in a country rotting from the inside out. Even in moments of triumph, there will always be another battle to be fought, another law or rally to serve as a bastion for vitriol and hate. These are just some feelings “Luciferian Towers” imparts, which ring all too familiar in America’s current political climate. There truthfully isn’t a solution to this societal degradation America has found itself in, but at least within the allegories of “Luciferian Towers,” one can find comfort knowing the damage it has reaped has not gone unseen.
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