Alcest – Les Voyages De L’Âme
Release: 2012Jan06
Label: Prophecy Productions
Rating: 4.5/5
Alcest‘s previous full-length, Écailles De Lune, was my first review for Mind Over Metal. Now that we’re at another release, it feels right that I do this one, too. Les Voyages De L’Âme opens with “Autre temps”, and the first thing you’ll notice is that Neige has ventured even further from his metal roots. The first half of this song has a mild appeal, even tamer than Green Carnation‘s acoustic songs. It’s awash with reverb and is dripping with soft, watery echo. Distorted guitars eventually make their way in (even some tremolo-picked parts towards the end), but the overall sound is soft, gentle, and perhaps in some respects, a little straightforward.
“Là où naissent les couleurs nouvelles” offers more of what you would expect from Alcest: that droning shoegaze place caught between joy and melancholy. The vocals are wondrous and mellow. You might think the drums would fall to the background like they do with a lot of post-black metal, but they’re way up there, produced well, and dynamically engaging. The song even features screams, and eventually semi-traditional blast beat black metal which is absolutely beautiful—not jarring in the least. Then, just when you think it may become repetitive, the song explores new lands of this dreamscape, as only Neige can.
The title track has more of this good stuff, though it starts getting excessively cheerful toward the end, at least as far as melody is concerned. Even though I like things dark, it does create a nice juxtaposition against the more forlorn passages (although don’t expect smiles and hand-clapping like Mr. Big or anything). “Beings of Light” is another brilliant nod to the post-black, with a simple choral structure that is both elegant and heavy.
Les Voyages de l’Âme is a great album. The clean and atmospheric production shows logical progress, but composition doesn’t go anywhere new that’s of consequence. This is fine for now, because the sound achieved by Écailles De Lune did warrant further exploration, but for future releases, I’m hoping for progression outside of the atmospheric shoegaze post-black metal melancholy safety zone—so long as it’s not soft rock. [Deep inside, I hope you feel it, too. ~Ed.]
Composition: 4/5
Musicianship: 5/5
Production: 5/5
Mood: 5/5
Presentation (Ferocity/Doom): 5/5
Origin (Innovation/Tradition): 4/5
(but don’t take my word for it, Prophecy Production has made available the entire album on YouTube!)
~Breath of Mozym has a blog here and also just interviewed Neige.
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Mbernier71
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