Style: Blackened shoegaze, blackgaze
Primary Emotions/Themes: Driving through a long tunnel with nothing but artificial lights to guide you. When you exit and see the night sky in all it's glory from exiting that tunnel is this album
Thoughts: Alcest is such a fascinating band. They effortlessly mix that atmosphere of early shoegaze and post rock with black metal. Granted the black metal aspects of their sound are limited, reserved more for climaxes and moments of great turbulence... but they are still there.
It's my understanding that Kadoma is supposed to be inspired by Japanese culture and folklore. I'm not sure that I hear it in the music at all, but the artwork certainly reflects this. The music itself is pretty much par for the course with Alcest.
The music leans a bit more to the shoegaze side than a few of the other albums, but not nearly to the extent that Shelter does. There are a few moments of black metal injected into the music. While those moments are exciting, they feel a bit out of place compared to the rest of the album. They almost feel like they were included just out of obligation rather than because they fit the music.
That's kind of the overarching theme for the album too. Most of the album feels like it was written out of obligation. Almost as if someone said "this is what people expect us to sound like, so let's do that." It's a damn shame, because Neige is capable of creating incredible music when he puts his mind to it.
There are glimpses of course of what the band is truly capable of. The entirety of the title track is an incredible build up where many different melodies and parts of the song have their own section. The song springs into life at the end when they all intertwine to create this wonderful climax filled with majesty and all gives me all sorts of wonderful feelings.
The middle of Je Suis D'ailleurs has an incredible transition from post rock to black metal. It's the one point in the album where the black metal feels like it truly fits. It's stunning and fills me with the same sense of awe and glory as the title track does.
Other than those two parts and a few other riffs or transitions this album is petty dull. It's good by default because Alcest creates that level of music. However it is not up to the quality that the band set in previous albums. Fortunately this was a slight misstep rather than a sign of things to come. The following album brought the band back to it's full glory.
Written April 22nd 2024
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