'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! gives Godspeed You! Black Emperor's return a clear musical purpose. The Montreal collective build large instrumental pieces from guitars, strings, drums and noise, but the impact comes from how those elements interact. Even at its most forceful, the album has enough space for separate lines and textures to remain audible.
Its structure is easy to describe and harder to absorb: two pieces around twenty minutes long, with two shorter drone tracks between and after them in the digital sequence. Mladic introduces a tense string melody before distorted guitars and a heavier rhythm gather around it. The music repeatedly changes its weight and direction, turning a gradual build into something rougher and more unstable.
That intensity is one of the record's strongest qualities. The ensemble can sound tightly organised without making the playing feel polished smooth. Guitars scrape against the strings, percussion pushes forward and quieter details reappear inside the noise. The force comes from several things happening together, rather than from a single large tune repeated at increasing volume.
We Drift Like Worried Fire offers a different route through similar materials. Plucked figures and strings establish a more open mood, then the arrangement becomes increasingly dense. It breaks down and gathers itself again, making the final rise feel like the result of a long, changing conversation. Its melodic passages provide some of the album's most inviting moments.
Their Helicopters Sing and Strung Like Lights at Thee Printemps Erable make the quieter material important in its own right. Their drones, string textures and unsettled noise explore the spaces left around the longer compositions. They need patience, and listeners seeking continuous forward movement may find these sections harder to enter.
The record's size is both its attraction and its challenge. Details can be difficult to hold together across such extended pieces, and it does not offer a quick introduction to the band. Yet the playing has conviction, the recording keeps its layers distinct and the shorter works prevent the whole set from depending on two climaxes alone. This is a focused return with plenty of room for discovery.
