Black metal has been a genre of scorching emotive outbursts. The music is fast and abrasive; the singing is akin to the sounds a tortured demon might make. It is a dark and creepy section of the metal genre. Bands like Emperor, Xasthur, Dimmu Borgir, and others bring a sense of doom and destruction to their music. Another aspect that is usually felt when listening to this style of music is despair. Soaring guitars strike out melodies that seem to evoke plaintive, introspective feelings as opposed to the cathartic, anger management treatments usually associated with this stye of music. No band, that could be considered “black metal,” has done this greater than Alcest. A French band made up of one man, Neige, Alcest has structured beautiful songs around the combination of two almost completely separate genres of music.

Alcest new release, Ecailles De Lune, or Scales of the Moon, is a perfect combination of both black metal and shoegaze. Neige has created one of the most incredible mixtures I have ever heard, and he has done it without knowing a thing about shoegaze as its own form of music. In an interview Neige stated that he had not known about shoegaze or any of the bands associated with the genre and that after further researching the music he has come to love it. Strange? Yes, but maybe not as much as you may think at first. There is a certain atmosphere in black metal music that bears similarities to shoegaze. Ethereal, ambient sounds, whether dark or child-like in nature, are found in both genres of music, linking them to each other by a thin, and I mean very thin, thread. The connection can be made, and the transition or incorporation of one of these genes into the other is possible, however unlikely it may have seemed before.

The classic sounds of black metal are present on this release. Fast drums, fast guitars, and screeching vocals appear throughout the album. But, they are incorporated with pleasant melodies and even structured around shoegaze songs that sound reminiscent of Slowdive, Ride, and sometimes My Bloody Valentine, which makes a non-black metal fan feel more at home and comfortable with what they are listening to. With the shoegaze moments being incredible, and powerfully beautiful, Alcest has created one of the best albums, of both genres, in a long time.

Now with similar bands like Amesoeurs, and Les Discrets closely related to Alcest, this type of musical construction is gaining more recognition and respect, as it should. Plus, with two LP’s and an EP under their belt, Alcest is staying strongly ahead of the pack, lighting the way, with the brilliance of Ecailles De Lune, their newest release and the crowning achievement of this new genre, black-gaze or shoe-metal, or maybe gaze-metal? Whatever it ends up becoming, I am highly enjoying it and highly recommending it.