Kim Kelly’s Riff Wrecks Vol. IV

by Kim Kelly

And now, for something completely different—an honest-to-gosh album review slash essay! Riff Wrecks is still alive and well, but I wanted to do something different for this edition. It’s summer and the world has gone to shit, so let a girl live.

I’ve always felt that certain genres were seasonal. Winter is for black metal, of course; the icy chromatic tones, the flurried tremolo, the windswept Gothic atmospheres and howling vocals and occasional brittle synths are tailor-made for snowy, stormy evenings. Death metal and grindcore are hot, steamy summer genres; I put on the new Glacial Tomb the other day, in the midst of the heatwave that’s enveloped my city all month, and immediately started sweating. Doom feels like autumn, all slow death and decaying leaves and mournful intonations. When I was a teenager, I reserved Dissection and Agalloch for cool summer nights, when I’d roll down the window in my old Chevy and drive home through the woods in the starless pitch black. We don’t really get springtime anymore, but if we did—if I had to explain to someone younger what spring used to sound like to me—I’d show them Alcest. 

Its founder, Neige, has come a long way. The French musician, born Stéphane Paut (“neige” is French for “snow”) has been active in the black metal scene since the late ’90s, but he’s lived many musical lives since then. Some of his projects and collaborations, like recent live stints with Emma Ruth Rundle, have burnished his image as an artist, and one left an ugly stain: his ill-fated turn on drums with racist medievalists Peste Noire (aka “Kommando Peste Noire”). He later publicly apologized and emphasized his own stance as an anti-racist, but that’s one association that he’s had a hard time shaking off. It’s a shame, because if he’s as serious about his apology as it seemed, that KPN-sized hole in his resume is the only major fuckup in his 25-year career as a European black metal musician—and those who know the genre can attest that it’s nearly unheard-of to see someone in his shoes putting up those kinds of numbers.