When my son (a very talented 17-year-old drummer) played the song Le Miroir by the Provençal band Alcest for me in June 2024, it was the first time I agreed to go with him to a black metal concert. I admit that I spent my early teenage years listening to MG tapes of Iron Maiden, Helloween, and Metallica. But I never got through to Slayer or Sepultura — instead, I was captivated by Karel Kryl, then Beethoven, later Stravinsky and Ravel, and much more “classical” music. Now, nearly 50 and at least a partially professional musician within the classical music scene, I began to worry — weeks before Alcest’s November concert in Vienna — whether I had made a mistake by buying tickets for a post-black metal evening. Would my ears and classical music soul be able to handle it?
As a “professional,” I approached the matter with a methodically proven preparation strategy: I visited the artist’s website and explored various other sources. On Alcest’s site, I found all their albums (seven studio albums and three EPs), starting with Souvenirs d’un autre monde (2007) and ending with Les Chants de l’Aurore (2024), which is also the focus of their current tour. The tour began in July this year with an acoustic concert featuring pianist Nicolas Horvath in Limoges, France, and continues through 59 full-fledged metal evenings, concluding in Brooklyn, New York, in March 2025. I must admit that to learn more about the band’s history, I had to look beyond the official (and very tasteful) website, which, in addition to music, captivates with its mysterious graphics and music videos.
Alcest functions in a rather unconventional format. The main creative force is guitarist and vocalist Neige (real name Stéphan Paut), who first expressed himself artistically with a solo project in 2000. After years of exploring the murky waters of black metal, shoegaze, and post-metal, Alcest’s characteristic sound and unique musical expression emerged — commonly referred to as post-black metal. Since 2009, the band has consisted of only two members: Neige and drummer Winterhalter. Naturally, two people aren't enough for live performances, so Pierre "Zero" Corson (guitar and vocals) and Indria Saray (bass) have been the group’s regular “live musicians” since 2010. When it comes to metal music, analysis or over-description isn’t always desirable. Still, I recalled a fundamental observation about the difference between classical and genres like rock, jazz, or pop — which dominated the second half of the 20th century. An unnamed Spanish professor once noted a key distinction in their spectral orientation. He saw classical music as fundamentally horizontal, while jazz, rock, and pop are built on a vertical (rhythmic) structure. It’s largely true, and musicians often ask themselves: which orientation is more appealing to the 20th- or 21st-century human?
But what could be more "vertical" than heavy rock or metal, where the key element — the drum set — often pushes rhythm to extreme levels? However, as is often said, many interesting things lie at the intersection of opposites. Perhaps that is the magic of Alcest’s music: while rooted in metal’s verticality, it finds delight in horizontal sonic textures that soften and gently soothe the wounded souls of die-hard metalheads — many of whom, I noticed, were suddenly enchanted by Alcest’s sound (as was I). Alcest’s horizontal dimension emerges seemingly spontaneously and naturally, likely reflecting the internal need of both the band and an audience unwilling to remain confined within the increasingly rigid vertical framework of metal.
I must confess, my first impression brought back memories of older REM and The Cure albums, as well as recent monumental projects from Icelandic band Sigur Rós. But a second listen — and especially the concert — awakened entirely different associations tied to my beloved realm of early Romantic music (Schubert, Mendelssohn, Mertz, Hummel) and their ideological forerunners (Herder, Goethe), who found inspiration in bardic traditions and the folk music of Europe. Still, for those who need a heavier metal “option,” Alcest offers an ideal sonic journey — a kind of spiritual landscape that provides space for emotion, dreaming, imagination, or meditation. The roots of this “landscape” reach deep into the inner layers of our civilizations — whether Celtic, Slavic, Indigenous, African, or Scandinavian. The only thing I’m sure of is that they all converge at a single point that seems buried deep but is likely just beneath the surface we walk on every day.
Discovering Alcest’s music was that kind of experience for me — all the more meaningful because it came through my adolescent son. A young man belonging to a generation we’ve unfairly burdened with the near-existential challenge of ensuring the survival of civilization. If that generation, like Alcest’s frontman, finds inspiration in a place of “pure harmony and light,” there is reason for optimism. After all, Neige, “like everyone else, is very anxious, has his own issues and demons, but he finds within himself a place full of peace and harmony… and so he draws inspiration more from that, rather than the darker parts of himself.”
And to be even more personal… At Alcest’s outstanding concert in Vienna’s Simm-City on November 19, 2024, I realized that in today’s rather hopeless world, our only true obligation is to find this inner positive place — and project it outward into the world around us. (Young people are clearly already seeking and finding it.) And since it’s getting rather late, perhaps the most fitting and powerful language left is good old heavy metal — which for years has been telling us quite loud stories.
