Luciferian Towers

Godspeed You! Black Emperor make instrumental music that can sound apocalyptic, but Luciferian Towers is powered by a stubborn belief that collapse is not the same thing as surrender. The band’s own statement around the album came with a list of “grand demands”, calling for an end to foreign invasion and borders, the dismantling of the prison-industrial complex and recognition of healthcare, housing, food and water as human rights. Politics are not an explanatory footnote here; they shape how the music’s tension and release are understood.

The Canadian group recorded its sixth studio album at Hotel2Tango and The Pines in Montreal, producing it with Greg Norman. Released through Constellation on 22 September 2017, the record runs for 44 minutes and is organised as a sequence of large instrumental movements rather than conventional verse-chorus songs. “Undoing a Luciferian Towers” and “Anthem for No State, Pt. III” were issued ahead of the album, useful entry points into music that accumulates force gradually rather than chasing immediate hooks. Strings, guitars and percussion often begin with repeated figures that seem almost static, then reveal how much can change inside repetition. A phrase gathers extra weight, another instrument enters, distortion thickens, and what first sounded mournful can become strangely exultant. That movement from fragility towards collective volume is one reason the album’s politics do not reduce it to bleakness. The sound suggests people building something together, even when the surrounding atmosphere feels damaged.

Critical response was strong, with a Metacritic average of 78, and several reviewers noted an unusually hopeful or melodic quality within Godspeed’s established language. That optimism should not be confused with comfort. Luciferian Towers remains severe, slow-building music that demands attention, but its climaxes feel less like destruction than insistence. For a first listen, follow the small changes: the point where a drone begins to lift, the moment a violin line becomes a rallying cry, the instant individual parts lock into one enormous body. The album’s scale comes from accumulation, and so does its hope.