Rejoice, for Godspeed You! Black Emperor are back. The Montreal post-rock collective released their widely acclaimed and Polaris Prize-winning album Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! in 2012, after a long 10-year hiatus. Luckily, we don’t have to wait that long as the band have just announced their sixth full-length album, Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress. Described as “arguably the most focused and best-sounding recording of the band’s career”, the new album was in the works for the last couple of years, which the help of sound engineer Greg Norman. According to the album’s blurb, “Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress finds Godspeed in top form; a sterling celebration of the band’s awesome dialectic, where composition, emotion and ‘note-choice’ is inextricable from an exacting focus on tone, timbre, resonance and the sheer materiality of sound.”
An excerpt of the monumental album’s opener, ‘Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!’ is now streaming. Listen to it below and grab the album when it drops on March 31st via Constellation.
In other related good news, Godspeed You! Black Emperor are heading back to Europe for a month long tour in April, kicking off in Hamburg on 7th, and also including a London show on 20th at the Shepherds Bush Empire. Check all their dates and other info here.
It’s been a decade since Canadian post-rock veterans Godspeed You! Black Emperor released Yanqui U.X.O.. Soon after the album release, the band went on hiatus, which they’ve ended in 2010 when they got back together to play live and they’ve been on tour since.