It's shoegaze cos Neil Halstead sings

My review of the new not-very-metallic but still quite beautiful new Alcest album runs today at the Dusted Tumblr.  It's causing all kinds of problems for people who like their black-gaze straight....

I said:

"A gorgeous swirl of diffusive sound, Alcest’s Shelter falls pretty far from frontman Neige’s black metal past, or even black-gaze, the metal-shoegaze hybrid that he did so much to define in the ’00s. Shelter’s weightless textures, its pretty, folk-derived guitar figures and its gleaming edifices of shimmering, amp-altered sound all argue for post-rock (Explosions in the Sky), space rock (Sigur Rós) or even avant experimenters like Ghost. Its sweeping, swooning scope gives it a fog-bound 1990s shoegaze feel, augmented, no doubt, by Neil Halstead’s English language cameo.  Metal? Hah. This is an album that could pass unmolested through a TSA screener — and that’s intentional. "

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Nice vid, though.