Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Intensity is a word that gets thrown around a lot more than it should. People will say metal riffs are intense, when really they mean heavy. They will say lyrics are intense when they really mean deep (or dark). They will say a character in a movie is intense, when they really mean well acted (unless they are talking about Daniel Day Lewis, that guy is fucking intense).

I find intensity is defined by a long, drawn out rise into a huge climax, like the restaurant scene from David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, or Natasha Lyonne's orgasm from But I'm A Cheerleader. Musically there is only one band that embodies the true meaning of intensity, and that is Godspeed You Black Emperor.

After releasing F#A#oo to huge underground critical acclaim, Lift Your Skinny Fists... solidified the band as an important and influential group. GYBE were one of the first bands to really bring classical music elements to the post rock genre. It required a different approach to music by every member, and Aiden Girt and Bruce Cawdron split drumming duites, resulting in an orchestral approach, paving the way for drummers like Chris Hrasky (Explosions in the Sky) and Agust Gunnarsson (Sigur Ros).

The drumming on this album blends symphony drumming with post rock intensity. There are lots of crescendos, and the snare work is very syncopated. Girt and Cawdron never get in each others way, if one is playing a steady snare rhythm, the other might swich to cymbals, or xylophone (or other percussive instruments, there are plenty on here).

With every song on this album being at least 19 minutes long, they build up over long periods of time, and towards the end the real magic happens. Both drummers have a fantastic sense of restraint, they know how to slowly build up their parts so that nothing gets boring but the tension builds little by little. When it finally gets released, they explode into a sonic assault of cymbals and loud, booming drums that would make any 60's phsyc drummer piss their pants.

This is not party music, it's music for the end of the world. If Girt and Cawdon turned out to be two fourth's of the horsemen of the apocalypse, I would not be surprised.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Storm (with some dude doing interpretive dance), Sleep (Part One, Part Two)