Alcest Les Voyages de l'Âme

Alcest 'Les Voyages de l'Âme' (Prophecy 2012)

This is wondrous stuff. Alcest are at the forefront of a strange hybrid genre tagged 'shoegaze black metal'. There is plenty of hypnotic, repetitive black metal out there and there is equally as many navel gazing Ride worshippers around, but none of them ever attained the blissed out heights Alcest have been achieving for the past seven odd years. This album, translated as 'The Journeys of the Soul' literally takes you on an emotional journey for 50 minutes.

Pitch perfect melodic vocals help tracks flow from overdriven indie rock, to pagan black metal back to midwest tinged emo and back again. It's introspective, down beat and pretentious whilst being uplifting, accessible and brilliantly naïve.
Main man, Neige, is a strange chap who recounts stories of his youth where he was able to enter an 'other' world where dream and reality became one. Niege now feels that in adult life the only way he can recreate what he experienced in this 'fairy land' is to gift us mere mortals with the sonic landscapes that Alcest produce. Let us be thankful that this unassuming Frenchman decided to grant us entry into his bizarre world because it's a lovely place to be.

The fact that Neige is upset by the Shoegaze Black Metal tag is understandable as it is a lazy misnomer for a band who explore so many different avenues of melody, heaping layer upon layer of warmth upon the listener. This has neither the impenetrable harshness nor ennui of either genre, and the result is an entirely unique musical vision.

For Neige to claim that he had never heard My Bloody Valentine until recently seems as disingenuous as Glen Benton of Deicide claiming he had never seen 'Evil Dead II (Dead by Dawn)' before penning the lyrics to the vicious classic 'Dead by Dawn'!

However, there's something so obviously otherworldly about the guy that maybe he did come up with this sound without the influence of Kevin Shields and company. Who knows? Who really cares when the result is this good.

I saw them live recently and it worked for the majority of the set, but there are frailties and nuances on record that couldn't translate to a cold concrete box filled with braying Weegies. I long for the day they play the Usher Hall and the penalties for any speaking is immediate expulsion and/or death.

I know I've been gushing, but this is fully deserving of all praise it receives.

Peace