Alcest: Les Voyages De L’Âme, NOW STREAMING

http://metalassault.com/news/2012/01/04/alcest-new-album-available-for-streaming/

This will be one of the top 3 albums of 2012, mark my words (Devin Townsend's Epicloud, and the new James LaBrie album will also be in the top 3.

This album is perfect from start to finish, it takes the best of their last two albums and got rid of anything that drags the album down and replaced it with perfection.
 
IF you haven't heard Alcest before, this is the album worth checking out. Shoegaze, Post Punk, Black Metal, and Post Rock, made into the most beautiful Metal album outside of any Devin Townsend album.
 
Check this out!

whoa whoa whoa, what about OSI, you just named 3 albums and didnt give room for OSI, or a lot of other good bands little early to be calling that...but i get your point
 
ill check it out

This album is my favorite of 2012. Nop I don't need to wait till the end of the year to say this. It's hard to find words to explain just how amazing the music is. My special edition is on it's way and I just can't wait. Beautiful music, beautiful lyrics, beautiful visuals, everything. Alcest is everything.
And for those who like Alcest, check out their brother band, Les Discrets, also releasing an album this year.

Only listened to it once so far. Not sure if I like it more or less than Écailles de Lune. But it's good.

I'll give this one a thorough listen tomorrow.
Sounded good at first hasty listen I gave it. 

I only liked the first 2 OSI albums, Blood did nothing for me.

But Alcest has been a favorite band of mine since 2008. Neige can do no wrong. And this is well worth checking out.
 
Faiseurs de Mondes is easily my favorite track on the album and will be closing out my radio show next week.

By the way, another amazing cover drawing by Fursy Teyssier. I love the guy's work.

Hopefully I'll find time to listen to it eventually. Alcest's previous albums have been great!

posting for future reference
 

Listening to this now, never heard of them.

Necessary Bump

I'm glad to see some people digging it already. I hope this gets more plays, they truly deserve it!

Listened to it again yesterday and enjoyed it. Needs more listens still, at the moment I find the second half to be superior. But great stuff, they've certainly taken more post-rock influences this time around (God is an Astronaut comes to mind) but still sound like Alcest all the way. I'll be playing this for a while now. 

The second is is definitely far superior, I dare to say Faiseurs de Mondes is by far their best song to date.

I loved the first Alcest record. Kind of forgot about them after that. Thanks for reminding me! :D

Not a problem man. I'm glad to support these guys. They are very great guys as well.

I listened to it and tried to get into it but it just didn't grab me. I mean it sounds good and there's a lot of talent there, but it's there just not enough of the "it factor" to grab me and keep me interested.

Listened to the whole thing and loved it. I've listened to bits and pieces of Alcest before and I've always loved the music but kind of had trouble getting past the lyrics being in french thing. I honestly don't care any more. Even if I can't understand the lyrics, the music is just too beautiful to ignore.

This is a great album!
 
To fault it: basically, it's like all/all but one of the tracks on the album are basically like the first and third track from Ecailles De Lune. As in, they're basically like standard-ish Alcest songs, about 6-8 minutes in length. There's nothing wrong with this format, but Ecailles De Lune was so fantastic because it had other tracks like Solar Song, Ocean, and Part II, which weren't in this format. So on this new one, the tracks seem to be broadly the same.
 
Now, the mix is great, and the songs aren't as cheesy as the are on the first album (for that reason, don't really enjoy the first album :/). And standard Alcest songs are great, so this is still a great album, it's just not as dynamic as I'd hoped, and doesn't really break any new territory.