There can be no soundtrack to a genocide. What music could possibly do justice images of people starving, bleeding and dismembered? How do you sit in the comfort of a recording studio with the privilege of playing instruments and making songs, and create sounds that articulate the gravity of such man-made atrocities?
As of Oct. 7, it will be two years since Hamas attacked southern Israel and the counterattacks on the Gaza Strip. The counterattack has been characterized as genocide by a growing list of human rights groups, scholars and experts.
It has been a year since Canadian post-rock pioneers Godspeed You! Black Emperor released their latest album, “NO TITLE AS OF FEBRUARY 13, 2024 28,340 DEAD.”
Godspeed has always been unabashed in its stances on social and political issues. That immediately shines through in the album’s no-title title, which refers to the death toll in Gaza since October 2023, a number that likely undersells the true amount of people murdered. Since October 2024, the Gaza Health Ministry has only counted identified bodies toward the death toll, not accounting for those left unidentified.
“NO TITLE AS OF FEBRUARY 13, 2024 28,340 DEAD” and its track titles alone, which are also stylized in all caps, paint a sobering picture. The grittiness of the guitars, improvisation of drums and relatively concise runtime all lend themselves to a sense of urgency.
“NO TITLE” contains some of Godspeed’s rawest and most direct work to date. One of their shortest albums in terms of runtime, it veers away from the grander and movement-based approach the band often utilized in their earliest and universally acclaimed works.
Sounds of a rusty swingset at a children’s park, creaking, old door hinges and unsettling, booming thumps can be heard on “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” and “BROKEN SPIRES AT DEAD KAPITAL.” The latter is the most mundane and abrupt song on the album, and the shortest song Godspeed has ever released. “BROKEN SPIRES” features a complete absence of rhythm and the expected Godspeed build-up and climax, but even if those things were present, they would be drowned out, struggling to poke through the unflinching gloom.
The beginning guitars on “BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” ring so distorted and warped that they serve as sonic texture rather than a melody that hooks the ear. What starts off very somber and dejected eventually becomes much more grim. From overhead, left to right, front and center, it’s as if sounds of a war zone are coming from an instrument–fleeting, sustained guitar riffs that you feel like you need to look up into the sky to properly hear.
Although the 10- to 20-minute epics heard on Godspeed’s late 1990s and early 2000s records do not make up the entirety of “NO TITLE,” the record is far from an identity change for the group.
“BABYS IN A THUNDERCLOUD” clocks in at 13 minutes and 36 seconds. Its harrowing tone is contrasted by frantic tempo and more concrete instrumentation as the track progresses, going on to incorporate dreary, stuttering strings accompanied by thick, looming guitar riffs, clashing cymbals and stereo-devouring drum kicks in the ending minutes.
Blunt, candid, guilt-ridden frustration pulsates through wobbly guitar riffs ripped out of the acid rock era on “PALE SPECTATOR TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS,” underlining more menacing guitars that evoke sudden spurts of distress and unease. The track’s atmosphere feels violent, disconcerting. Even with headphones on and a brightly lit room, it puts the listener on edge.
The unnerving tone created by subtle cymbal whisperings and ominous pad work on “RAINDROPS CAST IN LEAD” is offset by the delayed introduction of commanding pace and rhythm. The words of Michele Fiedler Fuentes that hit fittingly around the album’s halfway mark quickly bring those initial feelings back into focus however, eloquently reciting a poem dedicated to innocent women and children unjustly murdered before getting to experience a drop of the beauty and joy life can offer.
Raindrops cast in lead
Our illuminated side
And then extinguished and buried and finished
Under the perfect sun
Under the body falling from the sky
They were martyrs who fell
Because on our side they are martyrs since before we were even born
Those who tried and were killed for trying
Those who died young, angry or old, and never saw the dawn
Innocents and children and the tiny bodies that laughed and will remain asleep forever
And never saw the beauty of the dawn
Throughout the band’s lifetime, Godspeed’s world view has been the basis for its music and posture as a group. Band members are painfully self-aware in the privileges they and many in the Western world have, to the point where it could be taken as self-minimizing to someone unfamiliar with the band. To the band, “all music is political.”
“Whatever politics [Godspeed] had were born out of always being broke and living through a time when the dominant narrative was that everything was fine and always would be fine, forever,” said the band in an email interview with Maddy Costa of The Guardian in 2012. “The gatekeepers gazed upon their kingdom and declared that it was good. Meanwhile, so many of us were locked out, staring at all that gold from the outside in.
“You either make music that pleases the king and his court, or you make music for the serfs outside the walls. It’s what music (and culture) is for, right? To distract or confront, or both at the same time?”
Recently, Godspeed became the latest notable band to take its discography off Spotify, joining the likes of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Xiu Xiu and Deerhoof who, according to Pitchfork, did so in retaliation to AI and military investments made by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek.
Godspeed’s music, while historically and compositionally complex and grandiose, doesn’t hide its meaning even in the absence of lyrics. Raw, short portraits of discontent and plainly-spoken social commentary that refuse to wallow or self-indulge are placed in descriptions and liner notes of some of their releases. In the past, Godspeed have described themselves as a band about joy.
“A thing a lot of people got wrong about us – when we did it the first time, a whole lot of what we were about was joy. We tried to make heavy music, joyously…There were a lot of bands that reacted to that by making moaning “heavy” music that rang false. We hated that music, we hated that privileging of individual angst, we wanted to make music like Ornette [Coleman’s] Friends and Neighbours, a joyous, difficult noise that acknowledged the current predicament but dismissed it at the same time. A music about all of us together or not at all,” the band said in the 2012 Guardian interview.
That emphasis on joy can still be heard on “NO TITLE.” Many moments sound uplifting, but this time around, carry downtrodden undertones that are difficult to put a finger on. Warm, triumphant guitars grace the opening track, “SUN IS A HOLE SUN IS VAPORS,” from start to finish. Paired with scattered drumming, a piercing reverberation is felt that echoes long in the listener’s head even after the five minutes and 31 seconds are up. The lack of consistency and tempo in the song come across entirely intentional, serving as a pleading call to immediate attention and action.
Without context, the music on “NO TITLE” doesn’t sound inherently sad or somber, but the album description on Godspeed’s Bandcamp captures the guilt and anger that made up the band’s headspace when creating the record in 2024. Some fans who purchased the album on the platform are leaving comments with updated Gaza death toll numbers:
“NO RATING AS OF 19 MARCH 2025 >62,614 DEAD Favorite track: GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS.“
THE PLAIN TRUTH==
we drifted through it, arguing.
every day a new war crime, every day a flower bloom.
we sat down together and wrote it in one room,
and then sat down in a different room, recording.
NO TITLE= what gestures make sense while tiny bodies fall? what context? what broken melody?
and then a tally and a date to mark a point on the line, the negative process, the growing pile.
the sun setting above beds of ash
while we sat together, arguing.
the old world order barely pretended to care.
this new century will be crueler still.
war is coming.
don’t give up.
pick a side.
hang on.
love.
GY!BE
Godspeed You! Black Emperor describes the album “NO TITLE” on Bandcamp.
When compared to the closer, “GREY RUBBLE – GREEN SHOOTS,” the wake-up call that consumed the first track seems to have fallen on deaf ears. A sharp, frank sorrow concludes “NO TITLE.” There is no grand finish for a record that’s platform is made up of a deep-seated will and calling to get up and do something. To take action.
Music, and art in general, are powerful mediums of expression. But the existence of music itself, something that shows humanity, does not stop innocent people from being slaughtered. In an age of apathy and willful neglect, many do not care about thousands of bombs detonating and people helplessly screaming if they cannot physically hear it from outside their window.
As of September 10, 2025, at least 65,643 dead.
Velocity 
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