Just gave this album a listen, what an amazing experience. "Beings of Light" and "Faiseurs De Mondes" were my personal favourites, those songs moved me into a different realm after closing my eyes and relaxing, just focusing on the music. Thank you for the link.

Ooh def checking that out

I'm not a metal fan by any means, but I gave that a shot and thought it was excellent. Definitely been trying to get into metal so some more recs would be great.

If you liked Alcest, definitely give these albums a try:

Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
An Autumn for Crippled Children - Lost
Cold Body Radiation - The Great White Emptiness
Altar of Plagues - White Tomb
Agalloch - Ashes Against the Grain (Though The Mantle is almost overwhelmingly agreed as their best, I think this is a more appropriate rec)
Velvet Cacoon - Genevieve

what aspects of metal do you usually enjoy? or more specifically what did you like about the alcest record? the riffs? the atmosphere? the 'clean' vocals? the production?

Yob is kind of carrying the torch for Mastodon at the moment.

Atmosphere for sure. The thing is, I've never given metal a chance in the past because I couldn't stand the vocals and the stuff with clean vocals I thought was cheesy/I'd already tired it out in my youth. Recently I've tried to look past all that and have been listening to Mastadon, Opeth, Electric Wizard and they're all pretty incredible. So it's not like I'm enjoying specific parts metal now, I just have no basis for any extreme metal (or any metal that isnt Metallica, Iron Maiden, Pantera etc).

I'm a big dream pop/shoegaze fan so for me that Alcest album had a lot of elements of those genres that I love. I'm sure if I gave that album to some of my friends (who despise metal), they would probably enjoy it to some degree, as long as they didn't do research or I told them it was metal.

Definitely check out agalloch. No dream pop or shoegazing but in my mind, they're the best working metal act.

having no basis is good! extreme is a pretty personal definition anyway

yep, agalloch's the mantle is a genre defining release

though not really metal at all; have you checked out any swans, dom? they are my favourite 'heavy' band of all time, fwiw.

I've listened to both The Mantle and White Light From the Mouth of Infinity, but not really enough to form a decent enough of opinion on them.

Oh, also. I saw Wolves In The Throne Room live on Halloween and I couldn't hear properly for 4 weeks. It was awesome.

Hang, listen to Les Discrets - Septembre et ses dernières pensées

Not really that much of a metal album, more on the shoegaze side. Shit's good, though.

Oh shit, I definitely forgot Les Discrets, they are a must if you like Alcest.

And Ameseours.

Cold Body Radiation are a damn fine Blackgaze band along similar lines. This album from last year is my personal favourite by them:



-http://www.mediafire.com/?zacq6gcuddmbbd0