Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Luciferian Towers

Undoing a Luciferian Towers.

I see a chemical sky with grayish and reddish hues dominating everything. I see the leaden sky covering skyscrapers standing like obelisks, highways teeming with LED headlights, squalid and cancerous factories. I see the sky covering the acidic waters of poisonous rivers and the bare, decaying trees. I hear the wind blowing through the broken windows of now-abandoned buildings, passing through rooms once full of life but now without any sign of human presence. The wind whistles like cacophonic trumpets and distorted saxophones, soaring in the chaotic atmosphere of a hopeless future. I hear the funeral march of collapse, the rhythmic and elephantine advance of percussion crushing what little remains of the city. I hear the triumphant white noise sweeping away every tiny form of life still active, and the raucous guitars that, like giant megaphones, announce that the future has arrived, that the end is near.

Bosses Hang.

What are all these people doing? Where are they going in such a hurry? They seem like many small ants in apprehension, tense and vibrating violin strings. So many tiny people walking like automatons, immersed in their tiny touch-screens where their miserable lives reside. So many small people dominated by a few bosses, even smaller and insignificant. Small people living precariously, kicking life just to get those tiny pieces of paper called money. Small people with short lives. In the frenetic and anxious air, throbbing guitar strings vibrate, first weak then strong then weak again, like lungs breathing the little healthy air left. The violins are screaming to these small people to be ourselves, and not to be commanded by them! A mantra of drone music that, like a progressive manifesto, urges all the little people to dominate, not to be dominated! Arm yourselves with shovels, wells, and barricades! Do not be subjugated! Slow and gargantuan, the music echoes in the minds of the little people, instilling in them a reason to live, not just to survive. Illuminate your short life! the perfectly synchronized instruments shout. We, not them! shout the noise guitars. We, not them! shout the percussion that, like combat helicopters, advance on the city, plowing through the chemtrails of the gray and oppressive sky. We, not them!

Fam/Famine.

Do you hear down there, that alienating music? Listen to the noise of misery and famine. See how those children are forced to wield guns as if they were police officers who grew up too fast. See how everything is burning, leaving behind a dull world made of volatile, pitch-black ash. Hear the violins of homeless children, forced to hide like defenseless animals hunted by wolves. Look, and listen to the music of the apocalypse. Listen to the snare drum chasing us to come and finish us all. Listen, tremble, scream in fear. Look at how high the flames are, feel how the flames mimic the sound of gurgling, funereal guitars. See how everything is neglected, see how everyone is in panic. Hear the brass playing the funeral march for the planet. Look at the enormous coffin for the decomposed world we killed ourselves. Look. Listen. Can you perceive the music of the end of the world? Are you afraid? Do you hear the noise that makes everything vibrate? Listen to the sound of the end, the sound of the ultimate collapse.

Anthem For No State.

There is no longer a state. No longer a world. The anthem of a dying nation. The anthem of a state emptied of everything and filled with filth. No more trees, no more water, no more life. The anthem of a nation reduced to a malformed crippled carcass, drowned in a puddle covered by a layer of chemical poison. The anthem of a world we destroyed ourselves, with our hunger for money, hunger for wealth, hunger for conquest. The anthem echoes in the comatose nation, slow and powerful, with its distorted guitars, its slow bass drum beat, the pulsing tar-like bass. Even the ocean senses the crescendo of the anthem of the non-state, of the non-nation. But the ocean is not worried, not even when an army of noise and drone sounds plow through it like pirates ready to dominate and annihilate it. The ocean doesn't give a damn about the dying state, the imploding world, the men who want to kill it. Because the ocean is dying just like everything else. The ocean hears the restless pounding of apocalyptic drums but doesn't care. It's over now, and nothing can change things. Nothing can turn back time. Beat, roll, scratch, play loud and haunting, go ahead. There is no longer a state, there is no longer an ocean. There is no longer a world.

Like a damn apocalyptic movie that is, however, the mirror of raw reality, Godspeed You! Black Emperor are back to annihilate our hopes for a better world. The Canadian collective led by the god Efrim Menuck gives us this antisocialist manifesto, a progressive and dramatic manifesto. Luciferian Towers is booming, grand, political, alienating, and beautiful. Cohesive as never before, intact as they haven't been in years. Less noise, more rock. Less white noise, more unsettling melody. A swirling, epic, obliterating post-rock. A music that assaults the brain, that annihilates our minds. A huge record that confirms Godspeed You! Black Emperor as the last musicians still capable of being subversive, politicizing, propagandistic, and prophetic.