Gig of the Week: Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Forum, London NW5

Exciting and ecstatic: Godspeed You! Black Emperor

If this mighty Montreal collective ever tour under a "Best Of" banner, we're all doomed. Godspeed arrived as standard-bearers of outsider-dom in the 1990s, declining to "do press" and plying a trade in Morricone-meltdown instrumental epics at odds with pop and post-rock norms.

Just as their undulating sound seemed able to bend venues to their will, so their will buckled to no man, and certainly not to "the man".

After an eight-year pause, their live return in 2010 didn't skew towards soft nostalgia: the gigs were buffeted by new drones and fresh epics, the fruits of which can be heard on a huge new album, Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!, recently released with the minimum of press whoring.

It does contain music of maximalist beauty – exciting and ecstatic, buffeting and blissful – but this tour is more than an album plug: recent sets have featured yet another new song, the 45-minute "Behemoth", proof that Godspeed play to no one's tune but their own, thrillingly elemental one.

0844 844 0444; ticketmaster.co.uk; Sun & Mon