Alcest - Écailles de lune (2010) Reviews

I didn't have much time for French blackgaze outfit Alcest's 2010 sophomore album at the time of release as I simply couldn't accept a wispy, ethereal & generally positive sound within the context of extreme metal at the time. It just seemed too much at odds with my concept of what a black metal record should be. I think it says a lot about how far I've come as a music fan that I'm now able to not only accept but actually enjoy albums like this one these days. It's simply a matter of accepting that this isn't meant to fit into my personal ideals & needs to be judged on its own merits instead of being placed next to my beloved Bathorys & Mayhems.

"Écailles de lune" sees Alcest presenting combination of shoegaze, black metal & post-rock elements (along with some noticeably goth rock inspired clean guitar sections) in what I'd describe as a post-blackgaze release overall. The vocal style ranges from dreamy, unintimidating & androgynous clean singing to screamy black metal shrieks while the instrumentation offers a lot of variety with noise-laden shoegaze walls of sound leading into blasting black metal tremolo-picked riffage & stripped back post-rock meanderings. My enjoyability of the material included across the six tracks also varies quite a bit too with the brilliantly executed short dark ambient piece "Abysses" being my clear album highlight. Opener "Écailles de lune - Part 1" & the wonderful "Solar Song" see Alcest indulging in your more traditional shoegaze melodicism while closer "Sur l'océan couleur de fer" opts for a drawn-out post-rock excursion. The black metal elements are mainly left for post-black metal anthem "Écailles de lune - Part 2" & the disappointing blackgaze of "Percées de lumière" which is the only one of the six tracks on offer that I don't get along with.

The production job is of course lush & accessible with everything sounding very easy on the ear. It's interesting how Alcest can manage to use the black metal tools of evil in such a positive way but still make it sound so natural. It certainly makes for another interesting Alcest release but I can't say that I enjoy "Écailles de lune" quite as much as I do some of their other albums like 2016's "Kodama" or their 2007 debut "Souvenirs d'un autre monde". I don't think I find it's appeal to be quite as consistent this time & the inclusion of "Percées de lumière" does tend to grate on me a little bit when you consider that there are only the six tracks on offer. Still... I get quite a bit of enjoyment out of "Écailles de lune" these days & can't really fathom how I could have scored it a 2.5/5 back in the day given that I was actually pretty close to going with a 4/5 on this revisit.

For fans of Amesoeurs, Deafheaven & Lantlôs.

I took a shedload of mushrooms once and had a trip where I was soaring up among the clouds and I could see what looked like the whole world laid out below me. There was this giant tree that towered above everything else and it said to me "everything will be OK" and you know what, it was. The first part of Écailles de lune strongly reminds me of that as if that moment of hope was put into music and if that was all I got out of this, then that would be enough for me. Luckily, the second part of Écailles de lune is even better than the first and is my favourite track on the album, veering from frosty atmo-black to dreamy shoegaze effortlessly and seamlessly, both parts combining for a nineteen-minute epic of gorgeous music.

Side two kicks off with Percées de lumière, which is pretty solid and may be the most black metal track on the album. This is followed by a short and fairly pointless ambient piece before Solar Song comes floating in on a fluffy white cloud, shining it's rays of hope down on all below. The album closes with  Sur l'océan couleur de fer, a dreamy piece that feels like floating away to a restful doze on a sunny hillside.

Some albums have a perfect time and mood and listening to this on a Sunday morning in early June just feels so right. It used to be Souvenirs d'un autre monde, but I think this has now taken over as my favourite Alcest album. Neige showing other, more ham-fisted exponents of blackgaze, exactly how delicately the genre should be approached.