Godspeed You! Black Emperor / One Leg One Eye (live at The Troxy)

London
10 April 2026

It’s been a couple of years since Godspeed You! Black Emperor played the UK and I missed them then. But a couple of things have happened since then.

First, the genocide in Gaza reached levels of horror that were frankly beyond anything we had reason to expect. This was the inspiration for GY!BE releasing their untitled (or rather No Title As of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead) eighth studio album in the back end of 2024, which I picked up and rather good it was too. The second thing was that they decided to go on tour this time around with Ireland’s wonderful One Leg One Eye, who I’ve been a big fan of since they released their debut in 2022. It was a no-brainer really; I had to be at this one.

So, I made my way down to East London’s Troxy on a cool but sunny spring evening. One Leg One Eye are the side project of Ian Lynch, one of the founder members of Dublin atmospheric folk titans Lankum, and George Brennan, veteran noisesmith. While Lankum take traditional folk and lead it into uncomfortable places with elements of doom and the gothic, One Leg One Eye take this as a starter and push even further into folkloric drone and noisescapes and the aesthetic imperatives of black metal.

They open with with the unnerving drone epic “Glistening, She Emerges” from their debut album, a slow builder of discordant white noise that gradually raises the hairs on your neck. Next up, also from that album, was “I’d Rather Be Tending My Sheep”. This is a ‘traditional’ folk tune, a plaintive yearning to return to the fields from a life of army service and commercial ventures; but in One Leg One Eye’s hands it becomes more, an angry and mournful rejection of militarism and capitalism, and is the spellbinding highlight of tonight’s set with Lynch’s vocals resonating across the hall.

I’m still stunned from that when One Leg One Eye then move onto a song from the new album Crone (coming in May) which I believe is called ‘Many Are My Names Besides’, a droning chant of Irish Gaelic witches’ curses over what sound like a hive of rabid bees. It’s terrifying stuff, and Lynch accompanies this with a strange instrument that looks like the bastard child of an electric guitar and a hurdy-gurdy.

Their final song of the night is unknown to me, though it may well be an interpretation of a song off one of the two albums. Either way, it maintains the atmosphere of dread and melancholy and is a fitting finale. With a quick thanks and a shout of “Tiocfaidh ár lá!”, the two members of the band leave the stage. To be honest, One Leg One Eye were the band I was most excited to see on the night and they didn’t disappoint. But GY!BE clearly had other ideas. On to that in a moment.

In the break I popped down to the heaving merch stand to see if I could pick up an OLOE t-shirt. Not sure why The Troxy insists on having a merch stand in the foyer, which is way too small an area for a venue of that size. The back of the auditorium would make much more sense (like The Forum or Electric Ballroom). Whatever; hey ho.

Anyway, after a freezing wait in the queue I achieved my goal and in the process had a quick chat with Ian Lynch who told me the excellent news that a new Lankum album was currently in the works and would be released in the new year. Nice! Also had a quick chat with the guy from www.activedistribution.org, and every gig really should have an anarchist book stall.

 

Mission accomplished, I headed up to the balcony for Godspeed You! Black Emperor, figuring that as there was no photo pit on the night that would be the best place for taking pictures. Not sure I was right in that regard, but it was definitely the best place to view their performance.

Opener was “Hope Drone”, a ten-minute epic intro with a monochrome video backdrop as accompaniment, and I mean that literally. Not having seen the band live before, I was impressed to realise that the imagery, continuous throughout the performance, was manually controlled, literally played like an instrument throughout. Instruments were added to the building drone as players slowly joined the stage in front of the repeating word ‘Hope’ on the backdrop.

On to the main body of the set and the first three songs matched the first three from the latest album: “Sun Is A Hole Sun Is Vapors”, “Babys In A Thundercloud” and “Raindrops Cast In Lead”. Considering the album’s inspiration is the appalling genocide, it’s quite amazing how much hope and joy there actually is in this music with its building crescendos and wavelike collapses; but then I guess when facing the horrors of our present we really do need hope sometimes rather than just the anger. And that’s what we get here. Sometimes heavy, sometimes gentle, but always with a kind of positivity of purpose.

Next up is the sample-based ‘”..They Don’t Sleep Anymore on the Beach…”, which many readers will know as preceding “Sleep” from 2000’s Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven. But no, here it serves as the intro to “Monheim” from the same album. It’s a gentle, almost filmic number, and far more melancholy than the songs that have preceded it tonight. It does eventually build, but there is still a sadness to it that doesn’t relent.

Throughout the performance the background video continues, playing scenes of desolate forest, urban strip malls, industrial zones, police brutality, stock market tickers and images of technical blueprints, all in sepia monochrome.

They play three more songs, one of them a montage of two from the last album, “Pale Spectator Takes Photographs” and “Grey Rubble – Green Shoots”, both excellent; and a couple I didn’t know, “Bosses Hang” and “Gathering Storm”. Well, “Bosses Hang” is fucking amazing, soaring above and beyond Spiritualized at their earliest and best, drawing on blues and gospel and motorik and going on from there. And a great sentiment too.

The final ten minutes are a mirror of the start as the musicians slowly depart in ones and twos as feedback loops and echoes. And then with a quick wave the last of them leaves the stage, the houselights immediately go up, and that’s it. I came for One Leg One Eye who were awesome; but Godspeed You! Black Emperor, it’s fair to say, blew me away.

-Dave Pettit-