LUCIFERIAN TOWERS

One thing that GODSPEED! YOU BLACK EMPEROR cannot be accused of and that would be that this Montreal based post-rock band has glutted the market with product. Unless of course you count the many splinter groups that have emerged in its wake. While GODSPEED was at the top of their post-rock game all throughout the 90s and turn of the millennium, after "Yanqui U.X.O," the band waited an entire decade for a followup but got back into the swing of things with a mere three year wait for "Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress." While a band like GODSPEED is utterly unpredictable as to when and if a new product will emerge, the band surprised even the most loyal fans by releasing another album a mere two years after the previous, a record for this band that takes their sweet time to craft their next move at least in modern times.

LUCIFERIAN TOWERS is the sixth full-length album and came with a list of demands for the press release which included an end to foreign invasion, an end to borders, the total dismantling of the prison?industrial complex, healthcare, housing, food and water acknowledged as an inalienable human right and the expert f.u.c.k-ers who broke this world never get to speak again. Despite the rather ominous album title, GODSPEED have changed their sound substantially from the overtly ominous to a more melodic major chord dominated form of post-rock that offers the same chamber rock effects in military march fashion but eschewed the lengthy drones, cloud covered sky gloom and doom and detached apathy that have deftly adapted as their alone with the signature mood setting staples on their albums of yore. Dare i even say this album evokes a sense of self-empowerment and optimism.

While the band has existed in a sort of suppressed victim mentality that lashes out in a stream of sonic rebellion, GODSPEED have found a new sense of duty and rather than lamenting about the injustices of the world have finally found the inner resolution to make the demands of the change that has been desired all along. Perhaps due to the fact that many of the members exist in a communal style of living with families who invoke a new sense of responsibility and pave the way for the realization that we, of course, are the saviors we've been waiting for all along. LUCIFERIAN TOWERS provides a bridge between the sense of helplessness and despair with the more empowering stance of having had enough and taking the power back through sheer will power.

Musically speaking, this is unmistakably GODSPEED! YOU BLACK EMPEROR that attacks the senses like an orchestral swarm of bees as violins pierce the soul, waltz time signatures march rank and file into eternity and organ and synth atmospheres still cover the sun but offer breaks in the cloud cover to offer the glimmering hope of the rays of sun. Also gone are any field samplings and therefore the musical trajectory slides gently through glissando glazed gallantry in a post-apocalyptic society that has had the blueprints of reconstruction suddenly beamed down from benevolent spiritual forces from another realm. While dual drumming action provides a healthy percussive spinal column of the otherwise atmospheric procession into anarchic declarations, the musical mindset is more one of placid calming acceptance of the cosmic cards drawn and the inner fortitude of how to proceed with the next logical plans of action.

GODSPEED! YOU BLACK EMPEROR successfully delivers another emotionally fueled collection of musical tracks that unite to create yet another soundtrack to life and with a shorter time run that constitutes a mere single album instead of the whopping double album monstrosities of the past. LUCIFERIAN TOWERS downplays the escapist downtime and focuses on the swirling melodies that evoke a sense of action rather than one of pacifistic stupor. While many view GODSPEED! as only an apocalyptic whirlwind tour de force of nature with their chamber post-rock intricacies, LUCIFERIAN TOWERS displays a different side of the band and how their idiosyncrasies can easily adapt to the more optimistic realms of self-empowerment. Hopefully this is a completely new chapter for GODSPEED! that finds no end in the foreseeable future.