Angry Metal Guy

Alcest // Écailles De Lune
Rating: 2.5/5.0 — Should’ve been an EP
Label: Prophecy Productions
Websites: alcest-music.com | myspace.com/alcestmusic
Release Dates: EU: 29.03.2010 | CA/US: 05.04.2010

Alcest are a band hyped beyond comprehension, but not without merit or reason. In their debut, Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde, there is something beautifully otherworldly about the sound Alcest creates; A mysterious aura of pure ecstasy – a melancholic veil. I call it a veil because the beautiful melodies and personality of Alcest‘s music are just a disguise, hiding a narcissism and lack of ingenuity. The “oo’s” and “aa’s” which riddle Alcest‘s music may be very pleasant, but this angry metal guy finds himself screaming for Neige, the project’s motor and vocalist, to bloody sing something, rather than simply using his voice to portray nothing. It’s almost frustrating to me that I’m totally in love with this band.

Since the first Alcest record was released in 2007, Neige has gone into other projects, such as the ever-popular Amesoeurs. This has had the effect of helping to mature Neige’s songwriting and Écailles de Lune certainly showcases a certain maturity. It’s beautifully multi-layered, practically spewing thought-provoking and emotion-evoking power.

For the first three songs, anyway.

Luckily enough, as soon as you start this CD, you’re getting the best of it. “Écailles de Lune – Part I” is stunning. The guitars are hypnotically beautiful, the sound is diverse, the vocals are spellbinding, and nearly everything is perfect. I cannot describe how good this song is, it completely surpasses every other song on Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde. The sheer beauty of this song shakes my very spine, and it isn’t just the beauty that has improved. The writing itself is much more diverse, there’s a lot more going on. “Écailles de Lune” portrays a lot more emotions, and with the song constantly changing and projecting itself further into the realm of beauty, it was as if it couldn’t get any better. One thing that amazed me is that this song perfectly painted the picture on the cover of the album in my head, which is something an album has never done to me before.

While “Éscailles de Lune – Part II” is a step down from the superb beauty of the first track, Neige’s improved songwriting still makes itself apparent, and is still a step-up from Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde. The screaming vocals may come as a surprise to some, but since this song has a faster tempo and mood than Part 1, the screaming worked rather well. Luckily, Neige’s mysterious clean voice is in this song too, which accompanies the slower moments of this song. The song comes to a halt with a beautiful clean guitar melody, slowly bringing this song to an end. Very enjoyable, even if it wasn’t as good as Part 1.

The third track “Percées de Lumière” then comes running in, with an almost punk-like beat and mood. The melody is really good, and repeats itself throughout the song—but such repetition certainly isn’t unwelcome, as it never grows tiresome. This song may be the favorite of fans of Amesoeurs, as it has a feel very similar to that of songs on their debut. The screaming-shrieks chill you, the clean vocals spellbind you, and the guitars send you into a trance that binds you from pressing the pause button on your stereo. Though this song doesn’t spew with the emotion “Écailles de lune – part 1″ does, it’s very enjoyable and a certainly welcome addition to the CD.

Unfortunately, the winning streak ends rather abruptly. The next 3 songs do nothing but disappoint an Alcest-hungry metalhead like myself. “Abysses” is noise-filler. No point going in-depth on this one. “Solar Song” is just a projection of the the exact same problems and feelings of Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde had, but it just isn’t as captivating as any of the songs from Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde were. The instrumentation is relatively weak, the vocals get annoying and the song just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. “Sur l’ocean Couleur de Fer” just shows how comfortable Neige is with what works, the song is a fully acoustic symphony with fully clean vocals. But there just doesn’t seem to be anything here, a guitar and vocals. Whilst this may work with a lot of songs, all it does is draw back the veil that is Alcest – lack of innovation covered in beauty and oo’s and aa’s.

The contrast of quality in this album frustrates me beyond any album I’ve ever reviewed. We have songs that have (rightfully) earned their place in my list of favorite songs, and songs I just have to skip. This may have been fine if there wasn’t only 6 songs. I genuinely think Alcest should have just kept the first three songs, waited another year for other ideas to spur, and wrote a masterpiece. The first half of this album is wasted on the second half, and it almost breaks my heart to only give this a 2.5/5.0 knowing how good the first half is.

Oskoreien // Illusions EP
Rating: 4.0/5.0 — Great! Looking forward to a full length.
Label: Unsigned (Name your price for it at Band Camp)
Websites: oskoreien.bandcamp.com | myspace.com/oskoreienband
Release Dates: Dec. 31st, 2009

Oskoreien is another one of those DIY projects that I was directed to which delighted me to check out. There was a time when you, as a metal guy, probably got friended by Oskoreien on MySpace, when the creator was in full-on promo mode. The tracks that I remembered hearing were very much in the Ensiferum / Wintersun kind of vein. Lots of sweep picking and sort of melodic death influences. So when I got my hands on the Illusions EP I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Turns out that Mr. Valena had released something I wasn’t expecting at all: basically post-black metal. Illusions opens with a short acoustic passage and then launches into the first 13 minute track, a piece called “Transcendence” in good form. The melodies are solid, but simplistic. The guitar work on here isn’t like Ensiferum or Wintersun at all, but instead much more black metal: trem-picked over blast beats and minimalistic, with very little ornamentation. This doesn’t mean, however, that there is no musical sophistication here—just the opposite, in many ways this material feels much more sophisticated than Velana’s earlier work (not to say that it was bad, mind you). The ability to take simple passages, simple harmonies and beautiful chord progressions and make them shine like he has shows a solid understanding of composition and just an all around good ear.

These tracks are quite atmospheric, as one could expect. They land firmly in the Ulver and Agalloch territory with reference to both the acoustic guitar style and composition styles. Jay’s voice is also very similar to Garm’s old singing voice in the early Arcturus, Ulver days like what one hears on Kveldssanger and La Masquerade Infernale. He has a very forceful, vibratoless kind of delivery that is equal parts beautiful and creepy. Sometimes it sounds a little bit too forced for my liking, but it fits the atmosphere perfectly. And let’s face it, he must be doing something right if I *want* to listen to 23 minutes of music split into only two tracks.

My biggest complaint about this is the production, but not in the way that one would expect. The guitars have a lot of reverb on them, which sort of pushes them back in the mix and with the drums so high in the mix, but also so obviously a drum machine, it feels a little jarring sometimes. These are quality samples, but they have that sort of modern “tinny drum” kind of sound that I think should probably be avoided. Other than that, this record shines. Both tracks are well-composed, well-performed and worth checking out. And, once again, it’s a “name your own price” kind of deal, so I strongly suggest you go and download the thing and donate to Oskoreien‘s future.

You know what’s a stupid metal trend?  The 3.5 minute interlude with stupid soundscapes–these days, the trend is actually always involving the forging of iron or the angryness of trolls somewhere.  I don’t know where this started, so I’m going to blame Ulver.  Yeah, sure, Bergtatt was a great record.  It was really interesting and it had lots of cool stuff going on.  The stupid soundscape interlude, however, wasn’t.  Nope, just some guy running on crushed boxes (OK, maybe it was supposed to sound like snow, but it was definitely crushed boxes).  Vintersorg used it with great stupidity to interrupt one of his songs on Ödemarkens Son with the trickling of water because nothing screams metal like.. TRICKLING FOREST STREAM!!  (RAAAH!) It was used by Agalloch, but that was pretty much just them copying Ulver (actually, wasn’t The Mantel just them copying Ulver? Huh.  How ’bout that shit?).  In any case, in those cases it wasn’t super bad.  Just one or two places.. one could easily get through them without problem.  Just skip it, no biggy.  Right?

Well, the idiocy hit its zenith with Finntroll‘s very “interesting,” but immensely annoying, use of 4 minute interlude tracks  which were apparently of people eating beans around a fire on Visor om Slutet.  What. The. Fuck?  Seriously, what an incredible waste of fucking space, plastic and time.  It is obvious that the band had only 25 minutes worth of acoustic material to record, but instead of just putting out a cute little EP where Finntroll goes “folk” or whatever, they decided to make it.. I dunno… Annoying?  Yeah, pretty much.  Or stupid.  The annoyance that I had with this record, was fortunately tracked–that is, I can skip the crap.  On the other hand Ásmegin did them one worse and putting a fucking crying baby throughout the whole second half of their otherwise AMAZING album Hin Vordende Sod & Sø.  How irritating is that?  Totally irritating.  I mean, I know you guys are trying to be original and interesting.. but stop.  Please, stop.  It hurts my brain.

I’ve been listening to Crimfall‘s newest record, and it’s good.  But seriously, I’ve heard so much of this stuff before and it just makes me want to scream.  Since when did it become necessary and/or OK to put these stupid interlude tracks in everywhere?  Yeah, the album intro with the over the top orchestra or some stupid gore movie quote is now apparently obligatory.. I guess it’s not going anywhere, so I’ll have to live with it.  But can we stop with the “gazing into the past” sounds created in the studio in order to give your record some sort of stupid feel that doesn’t go at all with your over-produced orchestrations?  My god!  Just fucking stop it.  Not only that, if you’re going to include this stupidity for no apparent reason at all, then FOR THE LOVE OF THE METAL GODS: TRACK IT!  Make it different tracks so that I can skip your efforts to take yourself seriously as artists.  Stop it.  Stop. Stop. STOP!

I urge Steven Colbert to put these people on notice.  And I openly condemn this stupid metal trend.  Soundscape interludes: go fuck yourself!