Alcest is the creation of one Neige who started it in 1999 as a solo project. Now as a child, this Neige fellow used to dream about an alternate reality which he calls Fairy Land and the songs on this album are generally about this place. It seems this used to be a raw and grim black metal project but obviously not anymore.

Alcest has been getting a lot of press recently with the release of this, the first full length. They've been called the saviours of black metal, it's been said that Neige is taking the genre in new and exciting directions and basically this album's been getting a lot of hype. The one word that's been thrown around a lot right from when this album came out is Shoegazer. Now, I have to admit that this is a genre I'm not too familiar with. I've heard all of 5 songs from a band that plays this kind of music and it was pretty fucking boring. Also, I think this is a really wimpy direction for black metal to go in.

I'm just rambling here so I'll get to the album itself. Basically, take all of your typical grim black metal bands that play the same damn riff for hours on end and remove all of the things that made them grim, black and metal. Then add some really wimpy clean vocals and a whole lot of equally spineless melodies. That's Alcest. So where's the black metal, you ask ? Well, there isn't any. In fact, there's hardly anything here than can be called metal. The songs are dull and offer absolutely nothing. The concept of shoegazer black metal doesn't work. It's only on the last song when Neige leaves all pretension to black metal aside that things take a turn for the better. Tir Nan Og is an almost straight ahead pop song with some touches of folk and this is the one song on the album that actually works. The rest of the album is great if you have difficulty sleeping as the monotony on offer is akin to counting sheep.



Label - Prophecy
Year Of Release - 2007