The visions played into the rich inner world that existed in his head, a tapestry that included anime, video and role-playing games and, later, metal. I didn’t know it was not normal.” Why does he think it happen to him? He shrugs. When the visions began, he kept it quiet. “Now he sees that I’m making a bit of money and I don’t need to get a real job anymore, we’re fine.” There was a distance between him and his father. He was born in the small town of Bagnols-sur-Céze in the south of France, the only child of parents who both worked at a nearby nuclear power plant. “I’ve always felt like a fucking outsider,” he says with a mix of resignation and bitterness. He uses it to describe everything from Alcest’s place in the metal scene to his own existential feelings of not belonging.
There’s one word he comes back to during our conversation: outsider. It’s a physical need, something that’s present deep inside me.
“I have always had this need for spirituality. “Spirituality means you experience things by yourself, you don’t follow any guide or apply any abstract dogmas to your life with no reason,” he says. Sitting in the London offices of Alcest’s new record label, Nuclear Blast, he seems neither frustrated nor crazy, merely a quiet and modest 34-year-old Frenchman in a Type O Negative shirt.īut there’s an unwavering intent to the way he talks about the “spiritual journey” that began with the visions he started having as a child. If there really is a soul trapped in Neige struggling to break free, it’s having a nap right now. “They’re the screams of frustration of a soul trapped in a body like this. “The crystal clear voice, that’s the ethereal, heavenly, otherwordly me,” he says. The different parts of his personality – the ethereal and the corporeal – manifest themselves in his two contrasting vocal styles: one beatific and angelic, one tortured and screaming. That tension has played out across every Alcest album, and never more so than on their sixth, Spiritual Instinct, whose title refers to the metaphysical urge that Neige says drives his entire existence. I’ve always felt that I didn’t belong here. “It’s always been difficult to have one foot here and one foot in this other place that I have seen. “I was trying to put it in a musical form,” he says. As the singer, guitarist and creative heart of ‘blackgaze’ pioneers Alcest (drummer Winterhalter joined in 2009), he single-handedly seeded a new strain of metal, one that blended the brittle noise of black metal with blissful, dreamlike waves of sound that evoked… well, the place he saw in his visions. It has a sound unlike any other on the album, so look this song up if you missed it the first time around.Today, Stéphane calls himself Neige – ‘snow’ in his native French. It's a shame that many people don't even know it exists. The special-edition bonus track "Into the Waves" was my favorite of the new songs.
Granted, there are a few filler tracks and a bit of saminess in the middle (accounting for the 3.5 score) but there are also several songs that Alcest has knocked out of the park. Perfect music to listen to in bed at night before you recede into dreamland. This is a very soothing album, one you can get lost in. As such, I have no qualms about the direction the band is taking. All traces of metal are absent, but that same essential Alcest spirit is still there. Neige has a unique gift for crafting dreamy, majestic soundscapes and melodies that caress your soul. What many of you fail to realize is that the black metal influence was never what made Alcest special. Some really beautiful stuff from Neige yet againĪ lot of people are criticizing Shelter for being "boring" or are simply disappointed about the lack of metal.
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