Écailles de Lune, the second LP from romantic black metallurgists Alcest, is the most fully realized effort to date from its frontman and lone constant Neige. The spindly Frenchman has been a member of a half-dozen bands, from the brittle Peste Noire to the wildly and willfully diverse coed quartet Amesoeurs. Since 2005, Neige has been releasing music as Alcest that ranges from the black metal of 2005 EP Le Secret to the Red House Painters-via-Justin Broadrick 2007 LP, Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde. Now, he's finally fit all of his component parts-- arching atmospherics, celestial melodies, suffocating roars-- into one record. At last, Neige has made an album that plays like one.
At a time when both legitimately heavy bands like Wolves in the Throne Room and Liturgy and electronic acts like Ben Frost and Fuck Buttons are using black metal ideas to build something bigger, Neige lands one of the most cohesive, well-considered experiments yet. He peels apart the layers of black metal-- lacerated vocals, relentless rhythms, overtone-rich guitars-- and applies them to disparate structures and sounds.
On "Percées de Lumière", the rhythm supplies a pace that's nearly krautrock, while the guitars revolve around a minor riff that suggests Slint. So, of course, the metal shifts to the vocals. Neige generally sings gracefully and carefully, but here he screams in black-metal horror. "Écailles de Lune [Part I]", on the other hand, even sounds like a toughened mix of M83 and Sigur Rós, with guitars saturating every space and Neige's voice floating like Jónsi Birgisson's once did. Beneath the surface, however, the militant pacing of drummer Winterhalter and the increasingly sinister note selections of Neige presage something heavier. For the final two minutes, they rage like Scandinavian lords in a high-dollar studio. Thanks to the methodical if subtle way that song develops, moving from staggering rock to twinkling atmospherics to something altogether more intense, it doesn't seem out of place. The same holds for "Part II", which erupts quickly into a brutal rush only to burn itself out, dissolving into a ghastly drone that builds and collapses twice more. The line between the tormented and the gorgeous blurs into an imagined boundary-- tedious to find, delightful to miss.
Several reviews of Écailles de Lune have criticized the album's brevity, noting that, though its six tracks clock in just shy of 42 minutes, "Percées de Lumière" appeared on a limited-edition split last year, while the 108-second instrumental, "Abysses", doesn't warrant mention as a "song." That's an unfortunate dismissal, especially because "Abysses" is as vital as anything else here. Like the best of Alcest's output, it's a ghastly but beautiful hum. Neither an admonition nor an invitation, neither noise nor new age, it confirms the newfound patience and purpose of Neige, who's made an album that's more enchanting than even these last few years of promise have suggested.
