Aves - Demo

Hi. This is a rather unusual release. Aves' 2009 Demo is a very nice mixture of post-punk/shoegaze, black metal and a bit of post-rock. These guys are part of the so called blackwave movement that has risen in the latest couple of years.
And it's instrumental. You may have already heard it, and you may have not, but this is still a great demo.
I specifically love how they manage to blend these quite different styles seamlessly and still making it sound great.
It's instrumental, which is good because it lets you focus entirely on the instrumentation, which is quite awesome.
It's been quite humorously referred to as "twee black metal", due to the fact that Aves incorporates black metal elements into their upbeat, twinkly and melodic post-punk.
The black metal influences are most notable in couple of songs, for example the beginning of the second song.
Also, there's this badass 70's hard rock/heavy metal-ish guitar solo being played while the drums are doing insane black metal-style blastbeats. Does it get more awesome than that?

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Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

Today's album is from a great french (as you may have guessed from the album title), ex-black metal one-man-band. Actually, it's not so much "ex-black metal" as "never-became-black metal", as his first demo was raw, straight up black metal, but then begun playing more atmospheric/shoegaze inspired black metal. So this, his latest album, is a fantastic shoegaze album greatly inspired by black metal, most notably when the drums resort to blast-beats in the background at some points and there's also some black metal-style tremolo picking in one or two songs.
Wow, I just noticed how many times I've written "black metal" in this short, little text. Anyway, be sure to check this out. Awesome, beautiful album (Oh, and if you're not a big fan of harsh vocals, fear not; there are only clean vocals on this album).

Btw, does anyone think the little girl looks like a scary wax sculpture or something? :P

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