Description

For principal songwriter and frontman Neige, Alcest has always been a gateway to the otherworldly, a means of exploring his spirituality. An elemental two-piece, completed by long-serving drummer and creative confidante Winterhalter, their forthcoming sixth album Spiritual Instinct finds Neige at his most personal. This time I had something urgent to put on the table, he explains. It is a very cathartic record – something needed to get out of me. It s darker than usual, and heavier.

Written in bursts both during and after a prolonged period of touring in support of 2016 s hugely successful Kodama , the sense of urgency Neige speaks of manifests in a record full of spontaneity, of immediate impact – be that in the breath-taking pace of the tempo changes in Les Jardin de Minuit or the sun-kissed harmonies over an impermeable back beat in Sapphire , one thing Spiritual Instinct has is riffs, an acknowledgement and celebration of the black metal foundations that anchor their uplifting post-metal.  Green LP