''Spiritual Instinct'' is the sixth studio album by French

post-black metal Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emphas ...

band

Alcest Alcest is a French post-black metal band from Bagnols-sur-Cèze, founded and led by Neige (Stéphane Paut). It began in 2000 as a black metal solo project by Neige, soon a trio, but following the release of their first demo in 2001, band membe ...

. The album was released on 25 October 2019 through

Nuclear Blast Nuclear Blast is a record label and mail order record distributor with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Brazil. The label was founded in 1987 by Markus Staiger in Germany. Originally releasing hardcore punk records, the label mov ...

and garnered mostly positive reviews from critics. ''Spiritual Instinct'' features Alcest live bassist Indria Saray performing on bass in the studio for the second time in the history of the band after ''Kodama''.

Background and release

After the release of '' Kodama'',

s 2016 album, they departed from

Prophecy Productions Prophecy Productions is an international record label, founded in Germany by Martin Koller in 1996. It proclaims promoting "transcendental ..captivating music".

and signed with

on 10 April 2019 in anticipation for the release of their sixth full-length studio album.

Critical reception

''Spiritual Instinct'' was released to a positive critical reception, with

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, a review aggregation website that assigns normalised ratings out of 100, determined a score of 82 based on four critics. Sam Law, writing for British rock magazine ''

Kerrang! ''Kerrang!'' is a British weekly magazine devoted to rock, punk and heavy metal music, currently published by Wasted Talent (the same company that owns electronic music publication ''Mixmag''). It was first published on 6 June 1981 as a one- ...

'', gave a rating of 4/5, noting that while the album was fundamentally sound and well produced, it was inferior to Alcest's earlier work. This concern was echoed by other critics, including Lukas Wojcicki of Canadian music publication ''

Exclaim! ''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features in-depth coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly Exclaim! print magazine publishes 7 ...

'', and Jason Roche of heavy metal news site ''

Blabbermouth.net Blabbermouth.net is a website dedicated to heavy metal and hard rock news, as well as album and music DVD reviews. Blabbermouth.net was founded and is run by Borivoj Krgin. The first version of the website was launched in March 2001; in October ...

''. Nonetheless, most reviewers concluded that the album was enjoyable and a worthy addition to Alcest's discography.

Track listing

Personnel

;Alcest * Neige –

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

, illustration, art direction * Winterhalter –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, percussion ;Other personnel *Indria Saray – bass guitar *Kathrine Shepard – vocals on "L'île des morts" *Benoît Roux – recording, production, mixing *Mika Jussila – mastering *William Lacalmontie – photograph *Førtifem – layout, illustration, art direction

Charts

References

{{Authority control Alcest albums 2019 albums Post-rock albums by French artists Blackgaze albums