Alcest "Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde": Gorgeous

Originally, I was going to write this entry about not only this band, but another French metal project called Blut Aus Nord. Since the two are barely connectible, I decided to let the other one wait for another day - they're equally worthy of my praise, just not right now.

With the absolutely inane amount of post-rock bands clogging the music universe right now, it takes a lot for a band with that general sound to jump out and really make something not only incredibly beautiful, but also innovative. There's a lot of crap out there that follows one of the two standard post-rock formulas of "long crescendo" or "pretty then heavy," and even the genre's visual aesthetic seems to be getting a bit worn...lots of dudes with beards.

What Alcest has done is bring something new to the table in combining two genres that, at first glance, seem relatively incompatible, but upon further inspection, seem to work together in a way that is pretty close to perfect. Alcest is based in Avignon, France, and was originally formed as a rather straightforward black metal band. Vocalist Neige eventually tired of the rather narrow realm of possibilities traditional black metal offered, and Alcest became what it is now: a one-man black metal/shoegaze hybrid.

"Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde" sounds like a meeting between Slowdive and Burzum, essentially, and even that description doesn't quite do the sound perfect justice. The songwriting certainly errs more on the side of shoegaze or post rock, with dreamy vocals that sound more than a little reminiscent of Neil Halstead and airy instrumentation. There are several moments, however, when the band's black metal roots shine through - the occasional double-bass fills (which are never overstated), the treble-filled guitar tone, the foreboding and plodding intro to "Sur l'autre rive je t'attendrai," the borderline baroque sounding "Tir Nan Og." Black metal has always had the ability to be a beautiful genre musically, and there are many acts who have been able to take it into that realm - Burzum, Emperor and Shining spring to mind - but this record takes the gentler aspects of black metal and brings them together with a genre that seems almost tailor-fit for them, and makes a great, great fucking record.

This isn't really a black metal record, obviously, but I'd definitely put it in a branch incredibly close to it on the family tree. This is an absolutely beautiful record, and I'd recommend it to any metal fan looking for something a little more ambient...or someone who really, really misses Slowdive. Check it out for yourself at http://www.myspace.com/alcestmusic .

Overall....9/10

Review: Ministry "That Last Sucker"...What The Fuck, Al?

No cover art for this one as it's a leak.

Wow.

Wow, Ministry...just what have you done? I've listened to this record several times since I downloaded it so very excitedly the other night, and I can honestly say I haven't been this disappointed by a release in a long time.

I've been a fan of Ministry since my early childhood, having been raised on metal from an early age by my dad. I went on a dry spell from them for a while, but in the last couple years had realized just how absolutely fucking heavy and powerful they were and had gotten back into them again. I stuck mostly with Psalm 69 and The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, though Filth Pig wasn't half bad either. Last summer, I went and saw them on tour with the Revolting Cocks and it was hands down one of the greatest live shows I've ever seen. Ministry shows are a total mindfuck, both visually and aurally. My ears were ringing for three days.

The album they were on tour to support, Rio Grande Blood was not only one of the most incredible, but most surprising releases of that year. On Rio, Ministry ditched the industrial, instead going for a pure speed-metal record that absolutely killed. The album doesn't let up from start to finish, it's probably one of the best metal releases of the last year or two for me.

So...what the hell happened here then? I mean, to be blunt...this record sucks. It almost seems like they tried to go back and do an in-between speed metal and industrial record and just ended up with this bland nu-metal flavored crap instead. The riffs are weaker, the production sounds a lot less full than it did on Rio..., and the lyrics are much weaker as well. I'm hoping the bad sound can be explained by the fact that I downloaded a leak, but I really don't see it changing that much in the next two weeks.

There is one song that actually jumped out at me as any good on the whole record, and that is "The Dick Song," a tirade against our fair Vice President, that was not only a welcome piece of musical power, but a return the the clever and biting sampling and lyrical style of Rio....

I'm not as good at writing bad reviews as I am at good ones, but I can say this: this is a weak record. Weak all around. Songwriting, production, everything. It would've been better to end it with the last record, as all this does is weaken the legacy of an incredible metal band. All I can do, really, is try to forget this album and hope they stick to playing older material on their farewell tour.

Final verdict: 3/10

Review: Modern Life Is War "Midnight In America"

It almost seems redundant or cliche at this point to describe a band as one that is "life-changing" or one that "saved a life," but I can honestly say that Marshalltown, Iowa's Modern Life Is War fits into both of those categories for me.

Around two years ago, the by now seemingly endless cycle of personal mental demons were just starting their assault on me, and I was completely unsure of how to cope with them. In MLIW, I found a band that not only had the sense of musical urgency and desperation that I felt every day, but lyrically expressed the same hopeless feelings and anger that are born from growing up in a small Midwestern town - let alone just going to school there, as is my experience.

Some of my best hardcore memories revolve around this band: seeing them (and the absolutely mental crowd reaction) for the first time at Posi Numbers 05 in Wilkes-Barre, "The Outsiders" exploding like a bomb at a show in a packed classroom at DePaul in Chicago, and crust punks and hardcore kids alike going absolutely mental the whole set at the Tragedy show in Milwaukee. But the one that stands head and shoulders above the others is the night that this band played a one-off show at a friend's apartment in Macomb, Illinois. Even playing on a weeknight to less than 50 people (all going apeshit, natch), this band still played with an intensity and passion I have only seen a small handful of times before.

MLIW has become known for breeding their own seemingly completely unique sound - a driving, melodic, almost formless breed of hardcore that seems to sonically reproduce the physical surroundings of a small industrial Iowa town. Their first two full-lengths, My Love. My Way. and Witness, were lauded among hardcore and non-hardcore fans alike as the shot in the arm a largely stagnant genre desperately needed. So, needless to say, Midnight In America was hyped up just a bit.

So how does it deliver? Well, it's certainly not their best work (that, in my mind, is still Witness), but that isn't saying it's a bad record at all. What is the most noticeable flaw in the record, in my opinion, comes quite literally at the very beginning. My Love... and Witness both opened with some of the most driving, epic songs I've ever heard in my life in "Breaking the Cycle" and "The Outsiders," respectively. By comparison, "Useless Generation" just doesn't have the same slap-in-the-face appeal to it, though I love the track once it gets past the awkward drum roll intro and into a heavier interlude and the punchy instrumentation that follows for the remainder of the song.

The production on this record is much more high-cost than the previous two releases as well, but it seems as though hardcore bands have learned how to have fantastic production while still retaining an edge and straying away from flash (Converge's No Heroes being a prime example). Though the production is hardly Nickelback quality, I still feel a little let down by the fact that while there is more weight to the music, much of the rawness of the MLIW sound seems to be gone.

Perhaps it speaks to the overall strength of the band as songwriters that the good songs on this record really explode out of the speakers, whereas the bad songs aren't even bad so much as forgettable (minus the atrocious "Fuck the Sex Pistols"). There are no punishing epiphany-inducing tracks like on the previous albums ("By the Sea," "D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S.") but the quality is certainly still there. I was incredibly impressed with the atmospheric, swaggering version of the classic "Stagger Lee" folk tale, while "These Mad Dogs of Glory" and "The Motorcycle Boy Reigns" would feel at home on any of their other releases - though there is an interesting almost traditional breakdown within the latter. Jeff's lyrics are the only thing that have stayed flat line consistent over the band's history - both the quality and the delivery are just as phenomenal as ever.

The album's closer and title track brings me to my last point about this album, and really about this band as a whole. MLIW has been able to craft a sound that, as I said earlier, seems to be incredibly evocative of the surroundings from which they came. The - dare I say - epic and persistent instrumentation evokes mental images of wide open spaces, cornfields and desperate solitude. Jeff is an incredible lyricist, with brooding and brutally introspective lyrics born from growing up an outsider in a small Midwestern town. There is certainly a reason why I listen to this band almost exclusively at school: Modern Life Is War is a soundtrack for living in isolation, surrounded by the heartland that has the ability to both feed the American Dream and stagnate the minds and hopes of those living in the towns within.

Is it fair to judge this record based on the band's already plaudit-winning previous work? Perhaps not, but I think it's also fair to say that if Witness or My Love... did not exist, if this was MLIW's first record, I would not be as inclined to love them as I do today.

Overall...6.5/10...7/10 if I'm in a particular mood.