Offial Band Website
Official Youtube album stream
Alcest is band that I've just recently gotten accquainted. It was based on the release of their single "Autre Temps" that I gave this band a try and what I found was a band that I could connect with emotionally unlike any band I have listened to in recent memory.
Alcest play in a style that has been described as black metal mixed with shoegaze and elements of post-rock. I like to describe it as nostalgia metal, or introspective metal, as it evokes a strong sense of emotion, a strong dreamlike ethereal quality in the music and in the vocal work. It evokes a strong emotional response within the listener and takes you on a journey to places of your childhood, places of your dreams, lost times and realms.
Within this album Neige crafts a sound that has a very ethereal quality, almost as if you're being taken on an astral journey to places of your past, and places of your future. The elements of the sound are as such: clean guitars that weave a tapestry of beauty and nostalgia. Distorted guitars that add a certain thickness to the atmosphere and certain sadness at times, a longing to relive great moments of your past. The bass is not too subdued and adds a wealth of thickness to the sound, it doesn't just follow the guitar all the time it has it's own charm and it's on elements to add to the sound. The drums are very creative not only relying on blast beats and double bass runs, but also adding in little nuances to the sound, fills, rolls and other subtleties that really make the basic underlying framework of the songs. The keyboards are used very effectively, not so much as a melody instrument but as an atmosphere builder, to really glue all the elements together and make the emotional quality of the music really stick.
The vocals are mainly clean, with black metal rasps being few and far between, but it doesn't matter because Neige has the voice of an angel. His vocals are what really nail down the sound and make it an emotionally enrapturing experience. His vocals will tug on your heart strings and resonate into your very soul, something that is all too uncommon in any form of music these days, as most metal bands are content to be more brutal, more heavy, more dark and evil than the next. Alcest proves with this album that metal can be about taking the listener on an introspective and nostalgic journey, about evoking feelings that metal usually doesn't touch. With this album It can be about beauty instead of gore, about atmosphere and nostalgia rather than heaviness and headbanging, and about childlike wonder instead of soul crushing evil. This is an album to put on , set back, close your eyes and let the music and soundscapes just wash over you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Score:9.5/10 Favorite Track: Autre Temps
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No comments:
Post a Comment