les discrets

Record #840: Les Discrets – Prédateurs (2017)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

For most of their career, Les Discrets has been intrinsically locked with Alcest.

Both projects are pioneers in the blackgaze scene. Les Discrets bandleader Fursy and Alcest mastermind Neige played in the supergroup Amesouers (Neige has also played bass for Les Discrets on certain tours). They even shared drummer Winterhalter—who also played in Amesouers.

But when Winterhalter decided to work full-time with Alcest, Les Discrets was left without a drummer. Instead of try to replace him to write more hard-hitting, epic metal, Fursy decided to use the opportunity to change gears. And while the resulting album is a major change from earlier albums, it maintains the same delicate and beautiful balance between darkness and hope.

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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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