Hardly a surprise, given that they've been on indefinite hiatus for a few years, but Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Efrin Menuck has said that the band won't be reforming. The Canadian avant-garde group aren't splitting because they're bored, have musical differences or hate each other; they blame the break-up on the Iraq war.
Band member Efrin Menuck told Drowned In Sound: "The last American tour that Godspeed did was in the run up to the current war in Iraq. For what Godspeed did, it was very difficult for us to work out a way to communicate directly with the audience about what was going on. We could talk to people after the shows, or we could make announcements from the stage, but so much what Godspeed was, was one-way communication, and I had an existential freakout about that, that those tactics aren't valid anymore. People didn't need a rock band pointing in the direction of [how the world was at that point]. Maybe what they needed is some clumsy words, a presentation that was a little more human".
He did, however, add that there might be more personal issues also involved, saying: "On a personal level I now find [Godspeed You! Black Emperor] to be inappropriate. There's a complicated back story. I reached a point whereby I was no longer willing to contribute to the steering of the ship; it was like, 'Okay now, someone else point the direction, I love you all, but I need to ride shotgun for a while'. I think that bands do have a short shelf life".