By Paul Robicheau

Godspeed’s left-wing view was most clearly reflected at a merch table dominated by books on working-class resistance and anarchism, while the group’s dissonant post-rock embodied tension.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at the Palladium. Photo: Paul Robicheau

Godspeed You! Black Emperor looms as an enigma across the board. Members of the Canadian band thrive in anonymity, appearing in fuzzy publicity photos, giving few interviews, and performing in dim lighting apart from arty film projections. This modus operandi spread to democratic space across the eight-piece ensemble that filled the Worcester Palladium with haunting, pulverizing chamber-rock on Sunday.

The sound of three guitarists, one violinist, two bassists (one alternating between electric and acoustic, and each adding leads) and two drummers (who traded off between stand-up and seated kits) blurred along with the film images and songs themselves. Musically, there were occasional echoes of early Pink Floyd, Swans, and Glenn Branca, but this was an enveloping sensory assault as a total experience.

It all began with hope, or more specifically, “Hope Drone,” as band members –most going back to Godspeed’s mid-’90s launch — gradually emerged to an onstage hum. Thierry Amar’s quietly bowed bass and Sophie Trudeau’s violin built to full-band layers of drums and drones as the word “HOPE” flickered on the rear screen.

Hope is a fragile thing for a world in turmoil. Godspeed’s left-wing view was most clearly reflected at a merch table dominated by books on working-class resistance and anarchism, while the group’s dissonant post-rock embodied tension.

Seated over their pedals, guitarists Mike Moya, fellow co-founder Efrim Menuck and David Bryant raised a methodical din in “First of the Last Glaciers” as on screen rioters dodged fire hoses under glaring streetlights. Their cyclical churn kept pace with a quickening flash of stock-market photos during “Bosses Hang,” hastening a sense of hypnotic dread until a melodic denouement returned to slower imagery of half-constructed buildings as empty shells. And the orange glow of flames and steam at an industrial plant backed the eerie plod of “World Police and Friendly Fire,” a snippet from Godspeed’s 2000 landmark Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven.

Though it was difficult to see or differentiate who was doing what on which guitar in near-darkness, the long-haired Menuck stood out more, whether it was his sole feedback-laced riff to ground “Cliffs Gaze” or his string-sawing screwdriver to fuel “Fire in Static Valley.” When the guitars merged in a wall of tremolo and distortion, Trudeau would tend to lend violin icing, a pièce de résistance. Meanwhile, co-founding electric bassist Mauro Pezzente and Amar split low-end scaffolding that fleshed out songs over the seamlessly interchanged drumbeats of Tim Herzog and Aidan Girt.

The 2,100-capacity theater space was under a third full, but Sunday’s audience stood in rapt attention like a knowing cult, breaking into applause of recognition when the instrumental band dipped into its 1997 debut to finish with “The Sad Mafioso.” The 15-minute piece developed ominously as a split-screen showed smoking biplanes in mesmerizing free fall. Amar shifted from bowed bass to electric, Trudeau laced gypsy lines, and the group broke into propulsive rock.

To bookend how the 105-minute set began, members of the band exited one by one, Menuck giving fans the peace sign — coincidentally as a clip of protesters again popped on screen. Some members returned a few minutes later, not for an encore but just to tweak the continuing drone loop and turn off amps. Godspeed had already made its statement, in opposition to conventional rock-show presentation.

Paul Robicheau served more than 20 years as contributing editor for music at the Improper Bostonian in addition to writing and photography for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He was also the founding arts editor of Boston Metro.