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Rating: It's around 4:00 PM when my cousin and I arrive at Estragon, a fairly renowned venue in Bologna for concerts and events. The venue is preceded by a very large paved area presumably used for parking, but this time it's completely empty. It's swelteringly hot, and in the distance, we notice some undefined figures a la Lawrence of Arabia, who quickly disappear behind a red bus right near the venue where Godspeed You! Black Emperor will perform. I immediately think they are people waiting for the show to start, but as we get closer, we suddenly notice a person with a thick beard and long curly black hair, with a baseball glove and ball, who, along with one of the roadies I presume, walks past us in the opposite direction.
That somewhat shady-looking man is Efrim Menuck, one of the band's founders, who returns my halting "Hi" with a slightly surprised expression. I say "surprised" because evidently, my cousin and I arrived too early, as the concert is scheduled to start in five hours. Nonetheless, after watching him cheerfully toss the ball with his friend, I approach him and ask him to autograph the cover of the CD "Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven." He grins, scribbles something, and disappears into the bus. I wouldn’t see him again until the concert began.
Around 6:00 PM, other people start arriving, some small talk with a few and a sausage, onions, and piadina sandwich, and soon it’s around 9:00 PM. My cousin, a guy we met there, and I start to go in. We immediately get to the second row. I step away for a moment to buy the new album and one of those cool poser T-shirts that we kids love so much and quickly return to my spot. Opening is Bozulich, singer of the Geraldine Fibbers, and it's hard not to notice her splendid voice that accompanies the music played by her band, alternating between more experimental pieces and more immediate ones, all of them very enjoyable. The stage is imposing, not in size, but for what it hosts: two drums, three guitars, bass, and double bass, which help predict what will be heard shortly from the innumerable amplifiers.
Silence, the lights change color and intensity, and, little by little, Trudeau, Amar, Pezzente, the drummers, and finally Moya and Menuck enter, starting the concert with a drone piece accompanied by a video projected behind them with phrases and suggestive black and white images. Then they continue with the oriental-sounding Albanian, recently renamed by the band Mladic, and towards the end of the concert, the colossal Behemoth inserted into their latest studio work (divided into four tracks on the album). The band leaves the stage, and the not entirely satisfied audience doesn’t leave, hoping for a surprise return with some tracks from their early albums like Moya or Sleep. Despite the absence of some of their classics in the concert, listening to a band of this caliber live is an experience that's hard to put into words. It's impossible not to get caught up in it and not move your head in time with their vigorous musical crescendos or not be surprised by the screwdriver used by Mike Moya to create specific effects and sounds with his guitar. The audience was ecstatically carried away by the sonic density created in the venue without generating confusion, even though in the last 20 minutes, a long-haired stoner suddenly appeared in front of me, clearly unable to coordinate his body movements and understand where the hell he was.
After their long silence since 2012, Godspeed You! Black Emperor have reunited, continuing to surprise and play a type of post-rock that manages not to feel stale compared to many of their contemporary bands, due to the aggressiveness and eclecticism of their compositions. Although they too are repeating themselves by re-proposing studio pieces played during their concerts, and their musical offering may no longer be of interest, they remain the undisputed kings of post-rock, and live, more so than in the studio, they are able to convey the feeling of watching and listening to something unique that cannot be repeated by any other group.
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