Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress
Details
LP / Format
Constellation / Label
Post-Rock / Genres
www.brainwashed.com/godspeed / Website
Tags
Your Review
CRITIC REVIEWS
93
There’s a reason why GY!BE can go out in front of a crowd and play one song and have that be enough, and that’s because Asunder is Godspeed: the Band condensed into one piece. Their building tension (plenty of that). The lulling drones. The tear-summoning climax.
91
At just 40 minutes, Asunder is also 13 minutes shorter than Allelujah! But despite its brevity, Asunder has more meat on its bones. And though it calls back to many of the strengths of early GY!BE albums, it also highlights an evolution of intent.
90
Asunder, Sweet is Godspeed at their most conciliatory, most bloody-minded and most untouchable.
90
Godspeed You! Black Emperor don’t really deal in limitations. What they do deal in is catharsis, which the world needs as much now as it ever has. Maybe they came back just in time.
90
Asunder… is a focused distillation of a composition that is one of the band’s most affecting pieces.
80
It’s an invigorating makeover of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s firmly entrenched sound, and thus Asunder is both a thematic and musical awakening for the band.
80
Exchanging their volatile tendencies for restraint and focus, Godspeed You! Black Emperor have created another incredible work and one that finds them again evading the confines of formula — even if it happens to be their own.
80
Asunder may not be the second or third best Godspeed record but its likely to be one of the best records you hear this year and heralds a band that is not yet done creatively. It's thrilling to see the kind of compelling adult this punky prodigy has grown into.
80
Because they write music without words, you're forced to find meaning in the substance of Godspeed's music. Their vision remains a bleak one - but it makes resistance sound holy, and love sound like a revolutionary act.
80
Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is slim but huge, and tests the GYBE aesthetic with courageous enterprise.
80
The band might well still be fluctuating and developing, but, at least in parts on Asunder… they've truly perfected their sound, and there’s not many bands that that can be said about.
80
Asunder, Sweet begins in devastation and lament, takes time to plot, then surges with a single purpose: it is resolute and defiant, much like the players themselves.
80
While it takes a few listens to absorb, Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress captures everything we love about the gloomy experimental instrumental rock group.
76
There is nothing about this album ... that would have sounded out of place if they had released it in 2002. Change is not Godspeed’s way, but the other side of that coin is that, despite many imitators, there’s also nothing else out there that sounds quite like them.
75
Recorded during late 2013 and 2014, it’s a dramatic look at evil once again being destroyed — or perhaps as the one doing the destroying.
70
The conclusion of Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress is, as musically foretold on F# A# (Infinity) in 1998, the undoing of a world. The process of evolution is destruction. In GY!BE's musical universe, everything has already passed over the margin and returned to the void from whence it came. What can be left but silence?
60
Here, the band seems to retreat from such (was it always over-)determination instead to make joyous, explosive anthems born out of the turmoil, a little less on-the-nose politically, but more on-the-nose noisily.
60
Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress has little to say and fails to spark the imagination in the same way GY!BE have always accomplished. It’s a crushing disappointment to hear a band of this ilk release something that sounds so much like its contemporaries.
Mar 25, 2015
While not as long or sprawling as some of Godspeeds prior works, I personally feel Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress still manages to deliver that glorious feeling of your mind being blown like no other band quite can. The drone pieces are a little unneeded, and perhaps more time should have been put in building up to the great crescendos that GY!BE is known for, but still great album.
May 24, 2017
I dunno guys, i'm not lovin the droning instrumentals taking up such a large amount of the album. They still know how to write good... riffs? what the heck
Oct 8, 2016
It's still Godspeed. They haven't released an average album so far and Yanqui U.X.O. and this one are solid proof of that. They're their two worst records, but are still enjoyable enough to be called "good".
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END OF YEAR LISTS
| #19 | / | Magnet |
| #24 | / | The Skinny |
| #25 | / | Norman Records |
| #36 | / | Drowned in Sound |
| #38 | / | Piccadilly Records |
| #43 | / | musicOMH |
| #48 | / | Crack Magazine |
| #49 | / | Sputnikmusic |
| #52 | / | Rough Trade |
MISC LISTS
| #29 | / | Stereogum (First Half) |
Track List
- Peasantry or ‘Light! Inside of Light!’
- Lambs' Breath
- Asunder, Sweet
- Piss Crowns Are Trebled
Added on: February 24, 2015
