Godspeed You! Black Emperor don’t do house lights. Entering the main room from the harsh brightness of the lobby of the National Stadium is like being immediately dragged into the abyss. A drone sounds in the background, images flicker on the screens and the darkness is only broken by the flashlights of security trying to get people to the right place without breaking their necks. Then again, there’s a plethora of things that Godspeed You! Black Emperor ‘don’t do’. Over thirty years they’ve taken an extreme outsider status that few can match (not many rock bands have been questioned by the FBI on suspicion of being terrorists simply for stopping at a gas station). Yet the more they ignored us the closer we got and a first Dublin show in eight years is clearly a big deal.
Emerging one by one into the halflight, the band set about deconstructing the standard live show and rebuilding it in their own image. The set leans heavily on their forthcoming album and as such this often feels more like a recital than a gig, the distillation of music to its purest form. It’s not always obvious who’s doing what (there’s an awful lot of hunching going on) but the collective noise that the eight members create is astonishing. The template that they work from has been much imitated but seldom bettered and the two hours essentially spent watching a bunch of people standing still in the gloom is never less than enthralling. The odd fruitless attempt to film the action on mobile phones aside, there is nothing to distract you from the sounds emanating from the stage.
Adopting a ‘show don’t tell’ approach, the visuals are for the most part abstract and only occasionally touch on the political stance that has been so central to the band’s identity. Despite this, their world view is never less than clear and they say more than most without saying anything – the new record is called NO?TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD after all. From the excerpts we hear tonight it promises to be the perfect combination of rage and beauty. Fittingly given the history of the building, you often feel as if you’re being pummeled from all sides.
Finally the spell is broken as the guitar intro to ‘The Sad Mafioso’ (aka ‘East Hastings’) from their debut F? A? ? offers the closest we get to a greatest hit. Hands are lifted aloft, people start to shuffle and the fourth wall is broken. For ten minutes it’s a meeting of musicians and audience, made all the more impactful by what has gone before. They leave as they arrived, one by one, this time some giving a brief wave. Mauro Pezzente ups the ante with a double thumbs up, greeted with a reaction relatively akin to Chappell Roan walking onstage. There’s no encore of course, just an extended outro that keeps us in limbo until two return to gradually silence the various pedals and amps. The world is a dark place right now but, ironically, Godspeed You! Black Emperor have just let a little light in.