Les Voyages De L'Âme review

Les voyages de l’Âme (Journeys of the Soul)-Alcest (2012)               

                    Black Metal/Shoegaze/Post-Rock

                            Prophecy Productions

Alcest is a band from France that has gained mass attention in the Metal scene by mixing the melodies, atmosphere and heart of shoegaze and post-rock with the distorted riffs, heavy emotion and vocals of black metal. The band has since become renowned for this sound and for being the band which kicked off the style now known as the post–black metal or blackgaze genre.

The group is masterminded by French black metal veteran Neige, who rose to prominence as a session musician amongst some of the more established black metal acts such as Peste Noire and Mortifera. In 2004 he came together with Alcest, his solo project. After a very raw black metal demo, he totally switched gears and dropped the LP Souvenirs d’un autre monde (Memories of Another World) in 2007, showcasing the then completely unique blackgaze style. When asked about the change of style and what influenced Alcest’s music, he said it came from a reccurring dream he had as a child about a beautiful world outside of our own, one that showcased forms, colours and sounds not even conceivable within our reality. I have to say, I can see how such an influence led to such beautiful music.                                                                                                          

Fast forward past the amazing sophomore, Écailles de Lune (Moon Scales), and we have the first notable Metal release of 2012: Les voyages de l’âme (The Journeys of the Soul). With this record I got a bit of a surprise, as when Ecailles came out it was a lot grittier and black metal-leaning than I was expecting. The debut was chalk-full of acoustic guitars and rarely any harsh vocals, and I only expected things to get cleaner. With the 2012 output, we see  a somewhat modest amount of the two styles; definitely holding onto—albeit reducing—the amount of harsh vocals and melancholic, black metal riffs found on Ecailles, but also including a lot more of the floating and soothing vocals from the debut. It creates a middle ground between the two, leading to an album that has pleased fans of both sides equally.

Neige(Right) and drummer Winterhalter(Left)

Les voyages is filled with clean, echo-laden guitar leads tastefully intertwined with the distorted, trebley and sometimes aggressive guitar riffs. They combine to create a melodic composition that complements the multiple emotions without being dissonant to the dream-like mood of the concept. These are then endorsed by vocals of both the dreamy, clean variety and the tortured shrieks found in black metal today, all glued together with a mellow rhythm section that isn’t intrusive but still able to keep up with the emotions of the riffs even at their harshest.

All in all this is another great release from Alcest, and definitely keeps them on the path of consistency that every artist strives for, but to be honest there were parts of this record that leave me wanting a little more. Hopefully Neige will throw in some curveballs on the next release, as cutting and pasting himself with this project could be detrimental to the atmosphere he is trying to portray. Nonetheless, it is a great record. 7/10