We hit the studio with ALCEST, who are embracing their blackened side again. Yas!
The French genre-shifters are embracing their blackened side again. Get excited
AS IF ABDUCTED by aliens seeking information on humanity’s interest in metal, French genre-bending, mindfucking outfit Alcest have their ethereal sixth album ready and waiting to take to the skies. Meanwhile, back down on Earth, they’re hopping across Europe this summer and heading to Leeds’ Damnation Festival in November. Mastermind and founding cosmic being Neige somehow found the time to tell us what to expect from this new, darker era of Alcest.
How ready is Alcest’s sixth album right now?
“We’ve received the masters of the new record so we’re doing the final touches. We started writing more or less straight after releasing Kodama in 2016. I don’t take breaks from my writing because it’s like a diary, but I only keep about 20% of my material. Most of the bands I like tend to sound less inspired with every album, so it’s something I really don’t want for my own music – the more time that passes, the more hard work I put in to make sure the focus doesn’t disappear. I’m not promising we’ll only make good records, but we’ll try!”
Why have you produced it yourselves? “We like to control everything about our sound and we’re super-picky. It can be a good thing but, also, we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves and we suffer a lot but I hope the fans will notice the effort. We’ve almost literally bled for it because we spent so much time in the studio, we went a little crazy during recording. It wasn’t easy in the beginning but now even people who don’t like Alcest respect us a lot because we’ve always done what we’ve wanted to do and there’s no compromise involved.”
You changed the band’s genre to shoegaze two albums ago for Shelter. Are Alcest back to your own signature brand of ‘blackgaze’ this time around? “Yes, we are. You need to start from zero again with every record, but the most important thing is not to calculate what you’re going to do and just let the events of your life shape your new sound. When Shelter came out, people said we were selling out but I said, ‘Do you know what it means for a metal band to make a pop record?’ It means losing your fans, we couldn’t have taken a bigger risk. The new album has some fresh elements and it has a strong story behind it, but it’s also the heaviest thing we’ve done so far. We’ve been living in pretty dark times lately and, on a personal level, I wasn’t feeling very good for the last few years, so this turned out to be a dark record.” Your previous albums are often based on your own spiritual experiences. Are there even darker aspects we haven’t heard yet?
“I’m keeping a bit of the darkness for myself, but there’s more on this next record than I usually let out. Alcest is about real experiences and struggles I face in my life to live a down-to-earth existence while being in contact with something I discovered as a child. My goal in Alcest was to bring a little piece of that other world into this world in my very human and clumsy way.”
if this new album could be a movie, which would it be and why?
“Contact with Jodie Foster. It wasn’t the best movie in the world but it has an unknown being, communication with aliens and a cosmic vibe about the stars and another world. Our new album has all of that, it’s about the mystery of taking a spiritual path, knowing you won’t get any answers to your questions. Religions give you instructions to follow and you don’t ask questions, whereas if you take a spiritual way like I have, you understand you won’t have answers but don’t take anything for granted. There’s a lot of frustration and darkness in this record but that’s because you have to face a lack of answers to things in life, everybody wonders about things like death. Spirituality helps you become the best version of yourself.”
ALCEST’S NEW ALBUM WILL BE RELEASED LATER THIS YEAR VIA NUCLEAR BLAST