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Alcest: Écailles de lune
12/04/10 || Euthanatos
Holy Mary whorish mother of God, is this beautiful! It’s astounding, it’s godlike, it’s so simple and yet so fucking amazing. On the seventh day, the Lord (Yahweh, not Kenth) rested, being the cunts we are, no one rests on the Saturday, but on the Sunday. So on this Sunday, as I’m perusing the widely available albums to be illegally downloaded on the interweb, I come across the new full-length from French frog-eaters Alcest. I proceed to download the shit out of that, no particular reason, as Alcest failed to impress me with “Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde”. They have some great ideas here and there, and surely have made great strides since their shitty random black metal days, but nothing to write home to your momma about. That’s right, your momma; your mama’s so fat, she fell in love and broke it. Anyway.
Alcest have now made a deal with Satan, I’m sure, and released a divinely well-constructed, beautifully written and performed album with which I just want to make sweet lovin’ to.
Warning! This is not black metal. This is not black metal. This. is. not. black. metal. Got it? There is briefly some black metal to be heard on the two-parter title-track, but that’s it. Usually people describe Alcest as black-metal/shoegaze. Shoegaze? What the fuck does that even mean? You listen to the music while looking at your feet? The musician writes music while staring at his sneakers? What in the fuck? No. Just, no. Alcest perform some ethereal rock music, with a few metal elements, atmospheric, haunting and perfect, all of it. “‘Ecailles de lune” is their masterpiece, no two-ways about it.
There are only six songs here, one has less than 2 minutes, the others are pretty long and epic in scope. Alcest shows you the very best of acoustic music without resorting to folk, the best of how post-rock would sound with (great) vocals, and as I said, although there’s actually little metal to be heard, one cannot fail to see how the influence (and the band’s past) is there.
This is melancholy is its very essence and essential listening to anyone with half a brain and goos music taste. It’s exquisite and unique. Go get it, right now. And not, not illegally, you fat fuck, go buy it, stop being a cheap bastard. What, me? I’m divulging this shit, asshole, and, yes, I’m still going to buy it. Although, I’d like to take this opportunity and say to Prophecy Productions; Kind sirs, I love your catalog, you have some great shit being sold, but prices in Euros buttfucks anyone outside of Europe, not to mention that your shipping is way too expensive (15 Euros? Really?). It drove me to insanity to acknowledge that shipping to Brazil is the same as to Zimbabwe. I mean, what the fuck? Please fix that.
The cover: I’ve ran out of good things to say. But it’s pretty. Yay.
Guest review by forumer Maverick.
Oh Alcest… The beautiful bromance music…
Alcest is a band coming from France, the land of douches. Apparently they’re not just a bunch of douches, some of them are quite pissed about it, decided to bring some beauty to the country, or the world even.
This is a second full-length by Alcest. It’s a lot different from the first full-length, in a sense of their musical sound components. The debut was a lot clearer than this new one, quality wise that is. The new one brought back more of the “black metal” feelings to it from the old era.
That’s right, the band used to be a black metal band. But now, hugely based on shoegaze (whatever the fuck that is, but Internet says so). They switch between acoustic guitars and electronic guitars a lot, that’s not that new surely but the difference between the first and this album is that the guitars are turned more to the black metal side on this one than the previous.
I’ve never bothered to read what the fuck they’re singing about so I
have no idea. Vocals were all clean in the debut, but Neige decided to
scream again in this one. Sounds quite fucking boring. I actually
preferred the gay clean vocals only.
The music is not bad at all, it remains as beautiful as the debut. But I
think they overdo it. Too much, if you ask me. It’s starting to lose
the meaning of beauty. You get tired of it. The difference between the
electronic sections and acoustic sections do not differ that much in a
sense of what sort of atmosphere it’s based on.
It gets boring after a while, but yeah. Not bad, it’s ok.
Before I leave though, to all of you Alcest whores, yes, everyone goes on about how beautiful Alcest is, but seriously, shut the fuck up. Their sounds are not that unique or special; it’s actually quite shit. Go look outside of metal, idiots. You’ll one day encounter something similar sounding, but done way better than this French homo.
Because of all of your worshiping, I’m just gonna give a:
- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Prophecy Productions
- Website: www.alcest-music.com
- Band
- Neige: vocals, bass, guitars, keyboards
- Winterhalter: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Écailles De Lune (part I)
- 02. Écailles De Lune (part II)
- 03. Percées de Lumière
- 04. Abysses
- 05. Solar Song
- 06. Sur L’Océan Couleur de Fer
