After the other two members of traditional black metal band Alcest left, soon-to-be French metal icon Neige decided to use the project—or at least the name—as a vehicle for his own experimental mix of black metal, shoegaze, post rock, and gothic.

As a child, Neige would often dream that he was visiting a forest filled with glowing, enchanted creatures from another world. On Alcest’s debut full-length, the suitably titled Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (Souvenirs from Another World), Neige explores what he’s always imagined the music of that land to sound like.

The results are just as otherworldly as advertised, though it shows mere glimpses of where Alcest would go in their now legendary career.

Souvenirs isn’t the first such exploration for Neige. 2005’s Le Secret EP wandered the glowing woods in a similar fashion, essentially offering the template for Alcest’s catalog, and blackgaze as a whole. Souvenirs however retreats even further into the Neige’s fantasy, bearing little obvious resemblance to black metal at all. Where much of Alcest’s work feels like black metal borrowing from post rock and shoegaze, Souvenirs feels like the reverse.

Metal feels like the ornamentation of the songs rather than the template. There are no screamed vocals and scarce use of blast beats or shredding guitars. In fact, acoustic guitars are more more common here than the amp-blowing, tremolo picked six-strings that black metal is known for. At times, there’s a preciousness that borders on twee—if twee metal was a thing. Neige’s voice rarely raises above a whisper, occasionally joined by Amesouers bandmate  Audrey Sylvain’s soaring alto, the only other person recorded on this album. Closer “Tir nan Og” (Irish for Land of the Young) features almost no distortion at all, instead using elements of new age and hand percussion to fill the space between the acoustic guitars.

But that isn’t to say this album has no heaviness, or even darkness to it. There are enough moments of catharsis to put this in the metal section of my collection, though that might raise some eyebrows. “Printemps Émeraude” (Emerald Springtime) opens the record with scorching guitars shredding a major key.  “Ciel Errant” (Wandering Sky) interrupts its acoustic-led progression with a huge wall of guitar noise. The title track is somber and minor, acoustic guitars lifted by crunches of distorted chords. If it had screamed vocals thrown in, “Les Iris” could easily fit on Souvenirs much darker follow up Écailles de lune (there’s even some blastbeats!)

As wonderful as this record is, it is the last of Alcest’s full-lengths that I have added to my collection. But that’s not an indictment of this record as much as it is high praise for the rest of their catalog, which latched onto the promise of this record and launched to unimagined heights. The songwriting here is just as strong as anything else, the long songs twisting and turning through modulating chord progressions and major and minor shifts with expert composition. However, this record suffers the most from a production standpoint. The mix is sometimes clumsy, unsure of how to negotiate the worlds of ideas Neige brings to the songs. But luckily, the songs are strong enough to press their brilliance through nevertheless. And to anybody who says the similarly screamless Shelter was a major departure for the band, just listen to this one.