There's something strangely peaceful about places where there was once much death. I first felt it at Hellfire Pass in Thailand - the scene of a somewhat unknown piece of World War II history involving allied war prisoners building a railroad for the Japanese. At its peak, the death rate matched that of Auschwitz. Today, the railroad has been long removed, but a plaque stands in its place within a peaceful grove in the Thai jungle. Australian flags and ANZAC poppies decorate the rock walls that, all those years ago, were cut out by hand. It's difficult to describe the feeling of the place, but everyone felt a sort of reverence. Loud tourists fell silent upon crossing through the pass and laying eyes on the plaque, and swarms of butterflies decorated the ground.
In Cambodia, I felt it once again at the Killing Fields, namely the Choeung Ek Genocide Center. These fields were the sites at which the brutal Khmer Rouge regime massacred millions of their own people. Even today - as one walks around what is now an outdoor museum - scraps of clothing, teeth, and bone fragments from the victims can be seen emerging from the ground. Expelled from the earth.
Every artist thinks their art is the most pure form of expression, and I'm no exception. Music has a direct line to our emotions. Where all other arts require some level of conscious interpretation, music can be felt and understood on an instinctual, visceral level. Few modern acts have as great a control over this facility as the Montréal-based outfit Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
The band have been around for some time, releasing their first album F♯ A♯ ∞ in 1997. Even then, they had a winning formula, one they would refine over the ensuing 3 decades. Spoken word segments, field recordings, and long drones lead to huge, cathartic climaxes. Sometimes pejoratively called crescendo-core, it's music that, despite its many imitators, few can do as well as Godspeed (Swans being perhaps the only other band who come to mind).
The title (or lack thereof) is an obvious reference to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, backed explicitly or implicitly by Western governments but viciously unpopular amongst the populace. It's unfortunate that the answer to "What would we do if the holocaust happened today?" is "watch it on TikTok," but that's the world we live in. The album is standard fare, as far as Godspeed You! Black Emperor goes, but it somehow feels tighter and more focused than their recent output (such as 2021's G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END, an objectively stupid album name). Perhaps it's because there is a clear purpose embedded in this one.
Despite the huge, cloying climaxes and cold, desolate drone-scapes, I've always found the band's output to have a hopeful edge to it. This is particularly pronounced on NO TITLE, though so are the feelings of despair and loneliness. As I said, music is the only art with a direct line to our emotions. This album evokes similar feelings to walking around the Killing Fields, or seeing the Death Railway, or standing by the remains of the Berlin Wall, or walking through the centre square of Prague, where the Soviet tanks rolled in during the Prague Spring, or visiting one of many shrapnel-pocked caves in Laos. There is a placidness and a reverence to these places. An acknowledgment of their past, a sense of grieving for what had been, and ultimately a transformation into symbols of hope. One can only hope Palestine will one day be the same. From the river to the sea.