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Reviews
Alcest: Shelter
04/04/14 || The Duff
For a person who thinks Alcest is a little too grey for my grey metal, I sure have pursued every effort almost instantly upon its release; in purchasing “Shelter”, I already had the band’s prior three records, and in revisiting them years after having shelved these, they finally clicked and I thought myself on the way to discovering something gravy.
“Shelter” is, as you can probably gather from the artwork, a departure from Alcest’s black/folk metal and a complete bias towards post-rock and ethereal soundscapes or as some of you prefer “choir preachy buttfucking shit” – the leaves splintering sunrays through the grass to the rabbits nibbling on your balls; relaxing.
The opening melody is glorious (rather the melody to the single “Opale”, foregoing the intro), it is the twenty minute handjob, strawberries, the kisses from the person you love underneath the duvet on a Winter morning. My instinct when I first heard it was to strike the Rocky Victory Pose it is so uplifting. The rest, as you might mistake the rest of the record, is drab, but it’s not as if their past efforts were ever racing out of the fucking gate now is it.
To think this music boring though is to miss the point of “Shelter”. The only harken to old days are the folk guitar passages, the thick delay and brand-new, clean and twangy acoustic guitars, and then the melodies which are not exclusive to Alcest but rather Mogwai et al. that seem to have found a footing in today’s burgeoning black metal scene – those strummed one string melodies that sound like running water, nothing new.
I’m not entirely sure if this music is truly suppose to be listened to – the music is asinine, the compositions juvenile, but honestly once you’ve grown accustomed to “Shelter”, the record seeps into the subconscious and actually makes you quite content about the little things. I can masturbate at least once a day, without fail if I wanted to; cheese on toast; the G-spot to my anus and the seemingly indefinite number of objects that can reach it.
“The little things.” – Alcest
There is not much else to say – “Shelter” is nondescript, it is a feelgood record and of the sort there are undoubtedly better. Whether I know any of them is another issue as I am more often than not hip-deep into death and black metal and your Mother, so this comes as a complementary addition to my Porcupine Tree collection, my easy listening.
- Information
- Released: 2014
- Label: Prophecy Productions
- Website: www.alcest-music.com
- Band
- Neige: guitars, bass, vocals, keys
- Winterhalter: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. Wings
- 02. Opale
- 03. La nuit marche avec moi
- 04. Voix sereines
- 05. L‘éveil des muses
- 06. Shelter
- 07. Away
- 08. Délivrance
