Godspeed You! Black Emperor - NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD

The title is a tally fixed to a date, and the band left it there. It refers to the number of Palestinian deaths reported by the Gaza Health Ministry between 7 October 2023 and 13 February 2024. Godspeed's eighth album arrived in October 2024 with a written statement in place of interviews: "what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall; what context?; what broken melody?"

Musically it is among their most direct records. Recorded at Hotel2Tango during what the band called the winter of bombs, engineered and mixed by Jace Lasek and mastered by Harris Newman at Grey Market, it moves fast for a group that usually takes its time. "Babys In A Thundercloud" and "Raindrops Cast In Lead" both run past thirteen minutes and build with the patience Godspeed has always had, but the guitars sit closer to the front and Sophie Trudeau's violin lines cut sharper than on recent releases. "Broken Spires At Dead Kapital" is three and a half minutes of drone. "Pale Spectator Takes Photographs" is the deep-water piece. "GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS," released as a single ahead of the album, closes on something that could almost be read as hope if you squint, and it landed on more than one year-end song list.

The record drew some of the band's strongest reviews in two decades, showing up on year-end album lists across the board and posting a 79 at Metacritic. Thirty years into a career built on refusing the machinery around it, this is a band that has lost none of its force.

The 2LP edition adds a vinyl-exclusive thirteen-minute untitled ambient reprise of "Grey Rubble" that does not appear on the CD or the digital version, pushing the full run to sixty-seven minutes. Pressed at Optimal on 180-gram vinyl, housed in a 350gsm gatefold jacket with heavy printed inners and a download card. Constellation, catalog CST183.