G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!

The four suites of music here sound incredible, capturing the grandeur, aggression, and power of their symphonic punk with perfect clarity. And it feels incredible, too, as it endures passages of oppressive darkness to step at least toward a new dawn.

There are moments here that feel like being carried aloft by a parade, and moments that feel like the jail doors shutting. There are pools of calm and surges of impossible triumph.

This remains far from forbidding music, with an orchestrated heft that's as close to Ennio Morricone as it is Glenn Branca. [Jun 2021, p.83]

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. Not to be missed, though, is their skill for softer atmospheres. [Jun 2021, p.27]

STATE’S END! is another wonderful chapter in a book we hope will continue to be writ for years.

Even by this band’s lofty standards, G_d’s Pee at State’s End! is a particularly rocking instalment of their familiar franchise; still head and shoulders above most other music that sails under the flag of post-rock.

It’s sombre, yes, but it’s also calm and reflective – a moment to pause and consider where those of us opposed to the systems that have created our current crises go from here.

The tracks on G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END! share a sense of triumphalism brought about by the communion of music. The album soundtracks the end times, while offering glimpses of hope.

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.

Godspeed continue to perform with a bold and alluring command and unlike their peers, a majority of their output lands on a much wider scale.

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.

Godspeed’s new album articulates dark times, but it also presents the countermovement with breathtaking power.

On G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END! Godspeed has created a perfect soundtrack for these strange times.

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.

For all the existential dread contained therein, G_d’s Pee… also includes moments of elegiac beauty, as on shorter tracks Fire At Static Valley and the exquisite OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.).

Just as it seems like it's about to spin out of control, the band regain focus and add strings that shift it closer to a vaguely country-ish lament, then end the suite with the sounds of distant explosions. ... On the second suite, wayward drums and haunting strings tumble like a ship rocking from side to side, then the group locks into a steady, churning rhythm, slowly getting heavier and hotter until it all seems engulfed in smoke.

As always, the band are at the height of their powers when at their most emotively rousing. ... But when recalling their previous efforts, there's an unshakeable feeling that they've done it before, but better — though you can't fault them for doing what so many post-rockers have done over the past 20 years.