Style: Atmospheric black metal, blackgaze
Primary Emotions/Themes: Laying underneath the stars and looking out into the great beyond
Thoughts: I was pretty skeptical of this album when it first came out. I was not a huge fan of Alcest's debut, largely because it lacked any semblance of extreme metal. Years later it's fine for what it is but it doesn't measure up to the quality expected from Neige.
Ecailles de Lune fixes all of that. While it still has all of the elements of the debut, the band has decided to reincorporate some minor elements of extreme metal. Just enough to make the music more dynamic and fulfill the enormous potential of the band.
The album starts off very much in the same fashion that the debut does. The music is ethereal and laid back, much like a warm breeze on a summers night. I find myself equating this music to watching constellations on a clear night at summers peak. Taking in the greater universe around me, and realizing that all my worries and concerns are just a drop in the ocean... an atom in the universe.
It's the kind of music I like to close my eyes to and imagine floating away into the greater cosmos. This is especially true of part 1 and 2 of the title track. There are some truly magical moments in these twenty minutes of the album... so much so that they may be the best music that Neige has ever written.
The album as whole is about 90-95% clean vocals with the ethereal atmosphere. It's only for very brief moments that the pace picks up with a blast beat, and even rarer still that harsh vocals are used. It kind of makes me wonder how different this album truly is from the debut... now that I'm thinking about it, there truly is not much difference.
Where Ecailles de Lune truly shines though is in the songwriting. Even though the style is remarkably similar to the debut, the songs are flat out better composed. I feel a deeper connection with every one of them, even Solar Song which retains the major key shenanigans of the debut.
Alcest is a curious band. Are they metal? Probably... most of the time. Honestly I don't know... and at this point I don't really care. They write damn good music that tends to stay on my turntable for a very long time when I pull one of their records out.
Written April 14th 2024
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