'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

Few can match their feel for arrangement or sense of structure.

This potent emotional strain that runs throughout 'Allelujah is a confident affirmation of Godspeed's return to prominence. Ten years have very much been worth the wait.

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! sells itself.

Post-Bush, post-9/11, post-financial crisis, they sound more like [a] documentary. [Jan 2013, p.77]

Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! feels simultaneously enormous and tragic; the sound of victory, firmly set in the jaws of defeat. [Jan 2013, p.91]

Godspeed's music remains as deep, angry, tender, ecstatic and uncompromising as ever.

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! rewards immersive, though somewhat uncritical, listening: a glorious hymn to the visceral and transformative power of sound.

Marrying an experimental-rock ethos with a symphony's scope, Godspeed once again offers a record that easily matches the intrigue of their album titles and covers.

The Godspeed ethos of wordlessly eliciting universal truths is remains as devastatingly effective as ever.

It may take a while before 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! is accepted amongst the ranks of their earlier work, if that ever happens, but ultimately, this is the same epic, mystifying GY!BE as always.

They've made a modestly magnificent record that entirely validates this reformation.

The disc is padded with two shorter pieces that serve as ambient interludes only.... That doesn't detract from the alternating bombast and delicacy of 'Allelujah!, but it does make the album feel more like a prelude to a comeback than a full-on renaissance.

Godspeed is all about wide-open spaces here. And it's easier to find transcendence in the desolation, to get hypnotized by a single note, or get lost in rearranging the four vinyl sides into your own personal manifesto.

The time-tested tracks not only showcase the band doing what they do best in notoriously long, dramatic, panic-inducing instrumentals but are also startling reminders on why the band was so vital and lead such a movement to begin with.

Allelujah!'s defiance of strictures of classic post-rock cinematic crescendos, or extended kraut-rock grooves, or popular musical modes and tonalities are what makes it work more as political album than it does as a traditional emotional one.

After 18 years, the revered nonconformists have compiled an album that feels like a career-spanning retrospective.

They use a quiet/loud formula to epic create drone-filled symphonies, which rumble, crackle and erupt perfectly.

Compared to the discourse and debate surrounding the new album, the music itself is somewhat of a non-event: two epic 20-minute-long LP sides, and a 7-inch of drone tracks.

They still show no interest in doing things the easy way, and we couldn't be happier about that.

It's all powerful stuff and it can only be GY!BE.

Allelujah! picks up where Montreal's premier apocalyptic instrumental outfit left off, setting the collapse of the first world to wordless music.

'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! is a truly unforgettable experience.

The album lives up to its name in every way on this powerful, bruising, yet generous record.

The long tracks here are hard to experience or hold in memory as entireties-- too big, too detailed, too multiple.... Which makes what comes afterwards more genuine: the two shorter tracks (relegated to a dropped-in 7" on the vinyl version) each explore a moment that would have formed part of the succession of the longer pieces, probing atmospheres of breakdown, exhaustion and drift as if opening up the microcosmic heart of their work.

Godspeed have once again created a challenging, intense, evocative work, worthy of their canon.

'Allelujah!'s symmetrical sequencing-two 20-minute suites, two 6-minute drones-is as stark and stout as anything the band have released to date, unflinching as it stares extreme horror dead in the eye.

Allelujah! seems more immediate and more organic, but instead of feeling blown away by it's unreachable drama and grandeur, with a decade of age behind us and the band, it feels inhabitable in a way Godspeed never has before.