This Montreal collective’s terrifying post-rock always had a whiff of the apocalypse about it. With the global economy in the middle of its own personal Roland Emmerich movie, it’s a good time, then, for God Speed You Black Emperor to return. The nine-piece’s first record in ten years picks up where their last left off and if the music – deafening, portentous, soaked in end of the world melodrama – feels more relevant it has probably more to do with the times we’re living through than any sudden pertinence on the band’s part.
There are only seven tracks here, but with each clocking in at over ten minutes you can’t complain that they’re skimping on quantity. The quality’s pretty good too: named after the Serbian war criminal ‘Mladic’ is a throbbing monster of a tune, with shrieking distortion, swirling strings and a clammy, claustrophobic ambience. More upbeat is ‘We Drift Like Worried Fire’ which contains trace elements of a melody, and off-sets the doomy feedback with sudden cannon-blasts of anthemic guitar. There’s a lot of darkness here, but glimmers of something that almost feels like hope too.