Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!
Critic Score
Based on 29 reviews
2021 Ratings: #109 / 753
User Score
2021 Rank: #112
Liked by 215 people
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CRITIC REVIEWS

100
Record Collector

Split into four pieces, G_d's Pee is a declaration of dogged resistance amid what Godspeed call our "death-times" battles.

90
Distorted Sound

The depth and range of sentiment explored here lends G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! a truly cinematic quality, which is enhanced by compositional pacing and aesthetic sampling.

90
The Young Folks

G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! is a game-changer ... Past projects created otherworldly walls halting progress. Now, they’re just obstacles to be overcome.

90
FLOOD Magazine

Godspeed like to dirty things up, to sink their hands into the dirt and see what kind of mud gets stuck beneath the fingernails. This is resistance music, built off the back of the most difficult year in the modern era.

90
Northern Transmissions

The themes within all their compositions are ever-present and perhaps more important than ever at this moment in time.

85
Spectrum Culture
Blending their current level of sophistication with some of their earliest stylistic flourishes, GY!BE shows how far they’ve come by returning to where they started.
83
Consequence of Sound

There’s a cleansing quality to G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END. A dip into the baptismal pool that leaves us shivering in the afterglow. Or to put it in more current terms: the feverish aftereffects of a vaccine.

81
Pitchfork
For a quarter-century, the Canadian chamber ensemble has made hold music for awaiting a revolution. Suddenly, on their seventh album, they sound hopeful it could come.
80
musicOMH

It’s fair to say that you generally know what you’re getting with new Godspeed albums these days, but that doesn’t make the appearance of a new album any less thrilling. G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! might follow a certain well worn path but still sounds magnificent, especially at volume, pulling you in like a rip tide.

80
Classic Rock
It's the album's brace of 20-minute epics that will have sonic voyagers salivating ... A beautiful but unbearably poignant soundtrack for these assuredly rubbish times.
80
Louder Than War
Providing hope amongst all the chaos and uncertainty, Godspeed You! Black Emperor return in the nick of time with their skinny fists raised in defiance.
80
Kerrang!
Resisting social media and releasing just two grainy press shots in a quarter of a century, Godspeed remain wary of the mainstream. But as the world spins inexorably towards tipping point, they’ve never sounded as central to their times.
80
The Observer

With global events confirming their long-held worldview, the Canadian prophets of doom sound angrier, sadder and more beautiful than ever.

80
Mojo
For all their uncompromising aversion to the mainstream, this remains far from forbidding music, with an orchestrated heft that’s as close to Ennio Morricone as it is Glenn Branca.
80
Uncut

G_d’s Pee is less reliant on the thunderous quiet-loud crescendos of old. Instead, it finds its sound in glowing electric waltzes, piled high with massed guitars and sawing fiddles, that take up a riff and grind it into extinction.

80
Clash

Twenty-seven years on from their formation, their ability to convey the spectrum of both emotional and political feeling through the raw power of music remains unparalleled.

80
Loud and Quiet

At heart, there isn’t anything profoundly new for the band on G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END, but truthfully, there’s still no other rush out there like it. For ardent Godspeed fans, it’s the perfect fix, and for the uninitiated, it’s as good a starting place as any.

80
The Skinny

On G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!, Godspeed You! Black Emperor have created a perfect soundtrack for these strange times.

80
The Line of Best Fit

Their latest, G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!, lands roughly where we’d expect - but even so, these moments in particular feel reignited with an artistic spark we haven’t heard from Godspeed in years.

80
Beats Per Minute
As we watch the old world tear itself asunder, the concept of emancipation via anarcho-syndicalism has never sounded so elegiac and wonderful.
80
Paste

Having zigged for a while, Godspeed zags (of course) on G_d’s Pee, bringing back some of the inscrutable elements that made the band so interesting in the first place.

80
NME
‘STATE’S END’ is a tumultuous record for tumultuous times, but there’s a piece of galvanising beauty for every moment of crushing dread. For all the gunshots and explosions in the background, there are church bells and birdsong too. Godspeed’s new album articulates dark times, but it also presents the countermovement with breathtaking power.
80
AllMusic
The rousing final section is unexpectedly cheerful, and easily the most ecstatically triumphant music GY!BE have ever made, soaring upward and ending with the loud, victorious clanging of bells.
80
PopMatters

The best record the Montreal Godspeed You! Black Emperor have put together since 2000’s Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. And that is no small feat.

78
Still Listening

Ultimately, G_d’s Pee at STATES END! feels like both a warning and a call to action. Rather than a passive statement of hope, ‘Our side has to win’ can be read as an active threat: ‘our side has to win because the alternative is unthinkable’.

70
The Needle Drop

The well-timed G_d's Pee is Godspeed's strongest material in almost a decade.

70
Exclaim!

Contrary to many email greetings from the past year, these aren't "unprecedented times," a fact of which Godspeed are well-aware. That's why they're business as usual on G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!, even if that's a mode they've typically before gone out of their way to avoid.

60
The Arts Desk

Fans of the obtuse Canadian post-rockers are unlikely to be overly concerned, as there are no significant changes to their experimental proggy bombast, even if there is somewhat less nuance than on their last disc, Luciferian Towers.

50
Sputnikmusic

They’ve aged well as such, but G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END!’s statement is more a moot reminder of a socio-political climate that, really, requires no reminder at all outside of mainstream news coverage, least of all one this laboured.

Chode
70

A bit of a belated return to form for Godspeed You!, but a welcome one all the same.

From the soaring crescendos of Lift Your Skinny Fists to the brooding, pensive atmosphere of F#A#∞, Godspeed You! Black Emperor made their name known by constructing long-winded and elaborate medleys, with field-recordings intertwined between each monolithic musical apex to help drive the album’s narrative. However, the Canadian collective, following their return after a decade-long hiatus, with ... read more

Doublez
83

Drawing on both the early foundations that built their cult following and the present inspiration, Godspeed You Black Emperor delivers a searing album full of open-hearted truth. "G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! "is a dazzling piece of music, as much in the power of the orchestration as in the imagery. A colossal experience to be lived imperatively as a fall with eyes closed. You could say it's a return to grace.

And if the year 2021 was a "pivotal" year for Post-Rock? In ... read more

BradTasteMusic
81

Gave this about 5 or so listens, throughout the day and night

I might make a lot of awful half assed reviews, but when a new post rock album comes out by a big name, there is instant potential for it to end up on my sleep rotation. The only time I listen to music anymore is before I sleep, so that is a big deal

This is a great Godspeed album. It can sound a little repetitive at times, and it is very one note the entire time unlike older Godspeed albums, but it makes up for it with a new ... read more

denkirena
75

Proud to own this on vinyl even though that's in the bottom half of their discogaphy

72

Godspeeds strongest works in a while. I reccomend this album.

adrianiturralde
70

Fav tracks:
- Fire at Static Valley
- Job’s Lament

Least fav:
- Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE

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Added on: March 3, 2021