In the record buying community, every once in a while you might get a surprise. In this case, I had ordered a copy of post-hardcore legends Quicksand 2017 album Interiors, and was surprised to find that the seller had also included this ten inch.
Knowing nothing about the group, I popped it on the platter and gave it a spin.
What ensued was 23 minutes of as brutal and chaotic mathcore as I’ve ever heard.
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.
When I first stumbled upon the wonderful post-hardcore supergroup Less Art last year, I was a little unfamiliar with the home projects of the members. Obviously, I am a longtime and die hard fan of Thrice, but I had only given a precursory listen to Curl Up and Die, and had never heard of Kowloon Walled City at all.
But, the strength of Less Art invited me to look into them, and oh, am I glad I did.
Container Ships, their 2012 sophomore record, is a patient, cerebral piece of heavy music that blends sludge metal and post-hardcore in a brilliant way that lands somewhere between ISIS and Fugazi.
One of my favorite things about music history is that no matter how deep you dig, there’s always another jewel to discover. As much as I love the ethereal, crushing heaviness of bands like Holy Fawn, Spotlights, Palehorse/Palerider, and the throng of other bands often labeled “doomgaze,” I never heard of the apparent pioneers of that sound until last week.
But once I did, their swan song Weighing the Souls with Sand immediately grabbed me with its rich atmospheres and overwhelming heaviness.
As difficult as music taxonomy is on its own, metal brings its own challenges. The delineations between the different subgenres get so microscopic that it feels pointless.
For years, I struggled to figure out where exactly sludge metal fits. Many of the bands typically labeled sludge felt more like post metal to me. Others were undeniably doom.
But this record is undeniably sludge: it is thick and heavy, oozing out of the turntable for eighty minutes.
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.
It’s no secret that the lines demarcating metal have blurred as of late. From Alcest and Deafheaven‘s fascination with shoegaze and post rock to Zeal and Ardor’s melding of black metal and black spirituals, the sonics of heavy metal have never been less sacred.
It’s a tough time to be a metal purist. Luckily, I am not—at all. And good thing too, because if I were, I would have likely put up my noise at the brilliant genre-bending catharsis from Belgium power trio Brutus.
It’s no secret that I have a very, very weak spot in my heart for music that blends metal’s punishing heaviness with unabashed prettiness. And the last few years (more specifically, ever since Sunbather brought further attention to the type of gorgeous metal that Alcest pioneered) scores of metal bands have been pushing into the dreamy lushness of shoegaze and post rock—and vice versa.
But few bands do it with the sort of shameless simplicity of Holy Fawn. And thus, few bands do it with as much success.
If a mad scientist were to somehow map out my tastes and set about designing my ideal album to lure me into some sort of trap, on paper that siren’s call would sound a bit like “nautically themed sludge metal/shoegaze/post rock/indie rock hybrid.”
But playing through speakers, that idea is even more alluring—not unlike the diver toward the light of the giant angler fish on the cover, I cannot resist this record. I hadn’t even finished my initial listen before purchasing a copy.
Generally, when a band is signed to a major label, they tend to smooth out their sound a little bit.
Nobody must have told the Melvins, because their second release on Atlantic is rawer, sludgier, and more experimental.