blackgaze

Record #716: An Autumn For Crippled Children – Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love (2013)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

By now, long time readers will understand that I have an incredible weakness for heavy music that plays with more delicate elements. My collection is filled with these sorts of experiments, from Alcest to Zeal & Ardor—projects that hold tight to the crushing catharsis of heavy metal, but don’t shy away from adopting a sense of gentleness.

An Autumn For Crippled Children’s breakthrough album, Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love is an absolutely staggering example of this kind of music that is equal parts ear splittingly vicious and heart throbbingly sentimental.

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Record #678: Amesoeurs – Amesoeurs (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For all the impact its had on the global metal landscape, the French blackgaze scene is dominated by a small handful of projects. Perhaps the two most important are Les Discrets and the incomparable Alcest. And in Amesoeurs (French for “soulmates”), Fursy Teyssier of Les Discrets joins forces with Neige of Alcest, Audrey Sylvain of Peste Noire (the female voice on Alcest’s debut), and Winterhalter, who would go on to be a member of both Les Discrets and Alcest.

Amesoeurs, the group’s only album, stretches the limits of black metal in a similar way that Alcest and Les Discrets do, but in this project, they meld its hellish fury with the dark moodiness post punk more than glistening joie de vivre of post rock or the somnambulant heaviness of shoegaze.

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Record #674: Alcest – Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (2007)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

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.

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Record #639: Alcest – Spiritual Instinct (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If history is kind (and accurate) it will remember Alcest as one of the most important metal bands of all time.

After all, the flood of bands fusing the passion of black metal with the textures of shoegaze and the drama of post rock (see: Deafheaven, Oathbreaker, Brutus) are taking pages from their playbook. Their debut EP Le Secret fused these elements together in a way that many bands are still using as a blueprint—and it came out in 2005. 

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Record #579: Astronoid – Astronoid (2019)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

When I first heard Astronoid’s debut record Air, I was spellbound. Their particular brand of genre-bending heavy metal (which they call “dream thrash”) had all of the punishing heaviness of traditional thrash but with an tender, life-affirming heart. It’s blast beats and hairspray-soaked guitar solos were paired with dreamy melodies and anthemic harmonies.

But knowing that lightning rarely strikes the same place twice, I was a little apprehensive when I saw they were releasing a new record. Could the gimmick really pay off again?

The answer is, “yes, and handsomely.”

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Record #573: Astronoid – Air (2016)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If you’ve been following along at all, you’ve probably noticed that I have a deep love for weird metal. Particularly, heavy metal that looses itself from the macho tropes that have conventionally marred metal music and stretches beyond the rigid confines of the genre. Bands like Alcest, Deafheaven, Isis, Spotlights…the list goes on.

The Boston outfit Astronoid hits every single one of those buttons—and then some.

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Record #549: Alcest – Écailles de lune (2010)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Black metal has been undergoing a bit of a revolution in the last few years. Bands like Deafheaven, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Lantlôs have been augmenting their metal chops with elements of post rock and shoegaze. It’s a simple formula, but surprisingly effective.

But at the forefront of the “blackgaze” movement is a French group called Alcest, who wrote much of the blueprint on their breakthrough record Écailles de lune. 

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