Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Classic or Dud?

I'm not sure this is their best album, but I think the first track might be their best song.

^^^100% agreeing with this right now.

It's really good, but I miss the more chamber-like movements. Everything on the new one sounds like it was composed to be played live with 9 people.

Mladic is just glorious.

it is. always been a huge fan but I think that song tops Moya as their best song.

"Mladic" is the retitled "Albanian", right? Been listening to this lot since the last century and I still can't get a fucking song title right in my head.

Would really help if they stopped changing the names. Or using fucking DATES as song titles.

and using the "wrong" date format!

Email interview from the Guardian yesterday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/oct/11/godspeed-black-emperor-interview-full-transcript

I thought this was great. Hits just the right balance between wanting to change the world and understanding how things actually work. Couple of the commenters seem to disagree and are apparently disappointed that bands might want to explain how they feel through interviews: "Like the band, but give me a break. Just play the music and stop with the social commentary. If you feel like you are on the edge then give it to me in the music not in some bullshit interview."

'Just play the music'... imagining Godspeed as a Vegas show band...

this is nice. no bullshit, just straight on srs droney music.

it's always the same with this band. first time you listen to a wagnerian track like mladic (btw that's the serbian general responsible for the massacre of srebrenica) you think it is the greatest thing on earth, afterwards you feel empty and when you listen again it just feels like a big fart. totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch. the word DUD was invented for this kind of music. it destroys itself by repeated listening.

Indeed. Emptiest music I've ever heard. Hilarious, given all of the pseudo-radical political intent of the people involved.

it just feels like a big fart

interesting criticism

it's been 10+ years and they still haven't figured out a way to play non-vegas like places.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

you people are crazy. godspeed is music to live in and by.

Encountering Swans this year has made me shrug at Godspeed.

I like both.

21-year old me agrees with alex 100%. present day attitude has shifted. I agree that it is fundamentally totally hollow, grandiloquent, megalomaniac, unbearable symphonic kitsch but so is Wagner, and somewhat like Wagner (or at least stuff that's considered Wagnerian), it isn't meant for repeated listening. Godspeed is best heard as a statement of contrast. i.e. when you put them on once in a while, or when it's overheard

― sharp-looking tux for rent (flamboyant goon tie included), Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd say this fits Glenn Branca. This band is like a muzak version of Branca--incredibly loud but completely soporific via its facile predictability. It doesn't hold up even once, because you know exactly what it will sound like from the first second--which makes it pretty tiresome, given their proclivity for mistaking lengthiness with significance.

you clowns can keep reaching for ten-dollar critic words for 'bad' but i don't think you're touching on the record at all.

cranking "Mladic" at full volume while driving west towards the Texas sunset was kinda the highlight of my musical year so far. can't really "repeat" that but I'm grateful for it!

You're right, J. "Boring as fuck" is sufficient.

First track makes my top ten list for the year, probably, and is threatening to make me believe in these guys for the first time since Lift Yr.

Efrim's other band never did it for me, the one where the name changed like five billion times

also, NICKY! i didn't know you posted here man, cool

yah welcome to ilx

setlist tonight in bmore-

Hope Drone
Mladic
Monheim
Behemoth ?
New Song ?
One of the segue songs ?
The Sad Mafioso

― spazzmatazz, Thursday, 4 October 2012 05:20 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A couple of gigs I've downloaded from either side of that have the setlist as

1. Hope Drone 2. Mladic 3. Monheim 4. Behemoth 5. The Sad Mafioso

with Behemoth as a new 45 minute long, um, behemoth.

Title probably inspired by LJ's post in 2010:

As I've often said here, GY!BE peaked with their final album - IMO it's several notches ahead of the others, and works that dynamic like a behemoth

― forgive me fada (acoleuthic), Saturday, 10 April 2010 00:11 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know Constellation doesn't have the luxury to decide who they'll sell wholesale to, but this is still hilarious: http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?id=26873497&parentid=APARTMENT_MUSIC

ha ray i just saw your message, from my birthday no less! only got turned onto ilx like four months ago

* The 1st new recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in a decade
* Clear proof of the band's powerful return to form
* Includes new versions of the tracks previously known "Albanian" & "Gamelan"
* As honest & heavy as the rest of their discography
* 180-gram LP pressing in tipped-on gatefold jacket
* Includes 7" vinyl & a 12 x 48" poster, plus a digital download code
* Constellation, 2012

I love the second one. "No, no, seriously - they've returned to form, powerfully!" "Oh yeah? PROVE IT."

The second half of "We Drift Like Worried Fire" is pretty awesome

Man this song came up on shuffle just now and kinda broke my brain again.

Vinyl of 'Allelujah! Don't Bend Ascend from Urban Outfitters: $32.98
Vinyl of 'Allelujah! Don't Bend Ascend from Constellation: $18.00

Dud.

Playing the Barclays Center in October!

http://pitchfork.com/news/51053-nine-inch-nails-announce-massive-tour-with-godspeed-you-black-emperor/

watching them play to an uninterested NIN crowd as it slowly fills up the arena seating sounds horrible tbh.

http://cstrecords.com/statement-from-godspeed-you-black-emperor-on-polaris/

We're already making mincemeat out of them for that over on the Polaris thread.
Polaris Music Prize Shortlist - 2013

Oh. Been pretty inactive on this site of late, so I totally missed it.

speaking of gybe, dude realizes he has a copy of their super rare demo tape, asks reddit what he should do with it, gets trolled, deletes account

lol @ these redditors "pleeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaasse upload that tape you have no idea how much their music means to me" -- get a life losers

godspeed is great but i'm perfectly content knowing i'm never going to hear that tape.

Was listening to the stream, got to the singing part...

Perhaps this is better left unreleased and buried away.

Is the singing kind of uncomfortable to hear in the silver mt. zion way?

new album coming soon, excerpt of a track herein:

http://rock-a-rolla.com/main/?p=6212

There's a version of this track that's been floating around for a few years called Behemoth that's about four times as long.

That said, I really like this. GYBE! are pretty much the only post-rock band (in the circa 2000 crescendo-core sense) that I listen to any more.

According to the release, the album basically IS "Behemoth."

I'm excited

That excerpt is nice.

Swans have kinda taken over the GYBE token schmindie longform art-rock slot ime. but the last album was nice, if not ~mindblowing~

I guess there's a lot more vocals in Swans than GYBE so that's kind of a weird comparison to make... just saying I wish they had the same freeform/colalge aesthetic they used to rock so successfully in the 'good old days' instead of just riding these long waves of spooky intensity