GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR 'Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada'

'Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada' may last only half an hour, but in that time it imparts an internal experience akin to that of watching a cast-of-thousands Hollywood epic. GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR are a Montreal-based nine-piece ensemble that uses massed strings, ringing electric guitars, and martial drums to evoke endless vistas and stir strong emotions. "Moya" opens with a solemn drone overlaid with resonant violin overtones, then builds to a crashing, unapologetically melodramatic climax. The LP's second (and final) selection, "Blaise Bailey Finegan III," is more ambitious. Like a director who grabs his audience's tear ducts with both fists, the group inserts field recordings of a ranting paranoiac between sweeping spaghetti-Western passages that rise to exhilarating multiple crescendos, then fall away to ghostly, echoed violins.