WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN: “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER”

With a title like “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER“, it could be easily mistaken for a rare Godspeed You! Black Emperor bootleg.

You’d be somewhere in the ballpark at least, as the title belongs to the debut album from WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN – the latest collaboration featuring Godspeed figurehead, Efrim Manuel Menuck who continues his quest to conjure up the beautiful noise, this time alongside BIG|BRAVE’s Mat Ball and Ada’s Jonathan Downs and Patch One.

It’s a collaboration that’s every bit as good as it suggests on paper, with each member stamping their own mark on “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” – an album that excavates through the post-apocalyptic terrains via compositions that poignantly mirror the uncertainty of these times.

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While Menuck uses Godspeed’s searing white noise as, in the words of former GY!BE drummer Bruce Cawdron, “the hammer of hope”, WAWBARC occupy the other end of the spectrum. These are composition weighed down by the bleak colder months, and no amount of sun will thaw them out.

Quite often, it’s when Menuck assumes the role as vocalist where he offers the best results. His strangled cries adding to the emotional weight these compositions command, and one of the many reasons why “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” covers new ground for all involved. It’s music that feels like a recurring dream with subtle variations. Alternative universes within alternative universes. The ground hog day enveloped by those, indeed, winter blues.

It begins with Rats and Roses. An earthy composition where wildlife and the environment form the backdrop to pulsating drones and Ball’s knotty guitars that rifle from the speakers. The same timbres leak into Tremble Pour Light. “They hate us for our freedom,” laments Menuck in what is a creeping narration of the daily death march where hierarchies (“the manager of the manager of the 13th floor“) and wolves at the door slowly erode the soul.

It’s not the only moment where Menuck’s narratives are morose, slightly manic and feverish. (Ironic, considering he delivers each song with such poise and precision.) On the epic Dangling Blanket from A Balcony (White Phosphorous), he starts by recounting Michael Jackson brandishing his baby over the balcony of Berlin’s Adlon Hotel, and from there a motorik rumble of synths and guitars make for something ceaselessly hypnotic.

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On closing encounter, (Goodnight) White Phosphorous, proceedings reach climax as Menuck delivers the song through a fragile vocal that is beaten into submission. It’s the same way he expelled the dystopian dread during Pissing Stars’ closing eponymous track. Here there are echoes of the horrors that continue to unfold in Palestine, as Menuck delivers the songs through tired eyes; the exhaustion of seeing a world burning itself to the ground where the common dominators are money, power, and greed.

“There’s no good but the good we make ourselves/And we will live in absence,” declares Menuck on Uncloudy Days. It’s his most poignant missive, perfectly capturing the tension and dread WAWBARC feed off. While “NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” is another avenue for Menuck to channel his polemic rage, alongside Ball, Downs and One, he finds fitting allies, who together create the desolate atmospheres of noise that rest heavy on the heart.

“NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER” is out now via Constellation Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.