Luciferian Towers is Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s best in nearly a decade

Produced "in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. Eyes up and filled with dreadful joy – we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a quiet muttering amplified heavenward", Luciferian Towers presented the Canadian collective’s most compelling feature-length salvo of swarming, drone-heavy post-rock since 2000's seminal Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven.

Mirroring the aforementioned “dreadful joy” was the band’s command of veering between passages of all-out ecstasy and the sound of pure cataclysm. From opener “Undoing a Luciferian Towers” – a striking effort conjuring rapture imagery featured in Revelation 8 – to the album's searing, three-part flame-out, “Anthem for No State”, plumes of guitar textures and shrieking violin lines married exquisitely with drums, bass and braying brass patterns.

Familiar GY!BE territory, sure, but Luciferian Towers remains a singular exhibition capturing the genre trailblazers excavating a whole new realm of frisson-inducing instrumentalism. And with the band having accompanied the release with a "list of demands" including "an end to borders" and "the expert fuckers who broke this world never get to speak again" it doubled as testament to the fact that some music can spearhead political change without a single syllable uttered. As the long-standing house band of the very real threat of global upheaval, Godspeed remain unrivalled in that regard.