Amesoeurs – Amesoeurs
Code666 – code040 – 27 March 2009
By Simon Brand
Since Alcest released their 2007 album Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde, Neige has been at the forefront of the modern shoegaze-metal movement. Creating a very accessible and melodic brand of pseudo-black metal, he has attracted huge amounts of attention, both negative and positive.
Amesoeurs unleashed their first release on those paying attention in 2006 with their EP, Ruines Humaines, meeting with mostly appreciative views from fans as the style was very unique at the time. Now, after three years, some of the masses have soured and this album has met with much criticism, mainly from black metal elitists or general underground metal fans. Despite all of this, the album is still interesting in a strange kind of way.
The music itself is basically a recipe of one part black metal to four parts pop to five parts melodic rock. The resulting sound is both atmospheric and uplifting, featuring dreamy guitar lines and pleasing melodies. Actual black metal influence is limited to sparse use of shrieked vocals and instrument tone, tremolo picking is at a minimum, as are blast beats.
Guitars are played courtesy of Neige and relative unknown, Fursy Teyssier. The tone used tends to either conceal notes slightly behind layers of fuzz, forcing the listener to embed themselves in the music to fully appreciate the music in the same way as the effect is used in various Drone or Post-Metal bands, or a clean tone with reverb is used to help sounds cut through the mix.
Drums are a relatively standard fare; not much interesting going on, mostly your typical rock rhythms, although I do like the snare tone, very organic.
The bass is rather prominent here, playing counter-melodies against the guitars most of the time... I'm struggling to find much to say about the individual instruments here, because there's really not anything here out of the ordinary when you take influences into account. Amesoeurs have basically just taken standard elements from each of the genres and fused them, not really making a cohesive sound, but rather just mixing vaguely. Not so much making a milkshake, more lumping in some bananas, ice cream and milk and making the listener go at it with chopsticks.
Saying that I didn't enjoy the release would be lying, but actually pinning down parts which make the album worthy of some of some of the praise it gets is difficult. The music is very soothing and inoffensive, but so much so that it's like a salesman cooing sweet promises at you, wielding an innovative pink, fluffy toilet brush. After a while you start to look through the pink fluff and realise it's just like most of the other toilet brushes out there.
So take this as an apprehensive recommendation if you're looking for something to sit up with a cup of tea by the fire with, but otherwise, I'd look elsewhere.
Official Amoesoeurs Myspace
Official code666 Website
Code666 – code040 – 27 March 2009
By Simon Brand
Since Alcest released their 2007 album Souvenirs d'un Autre Monde, Neige has been at the forefront of the modern shoegaze-metal movement. Creating a very accessible and melodic brand of pseudo-black metal, he has attracted huge amounts of attention, both negative and positive.
Amesoeurs unleashed their first release on those paying attention in 2006 with their EP, Ruines Humaines, meeting with mostly appreciative views from fans as the style was very unique at the time. Now, after three years, some of the masses have soured and this album has met with much criticism, mainly from black metal elitists or general underground metal fans. Despite all of this, the album is still interesting in a strange kind of way.
The music itself is basically a recipe of one part black metal to four parts pop to five parts melodic rock. The resulting sound is both atmospheric and uplifting, featuring dreamy guitar lines and pleasing melodies. Actual black metal influence is limited to sparse use of shrieked vocals and instrument tone, tremolo picking is at a minimum, as are blast beats.
Guitars are played courtesy of Neige and relative unknown, Fursy Teyssier. The tone used tends to either conceal notes slightly behind layers of fuzz, forcing the listener to embed themselves in the music to fully appreciate the music in the same way as the effect is used in various Drone or Post-Metal bands, or a clean tone with reverb is used to help sounds cut through the mix.
Drums are a relatively standard fare; not much interesting going on, mostly your typical rock rhythms, although I do like the snare tone, very organic.
The bass is rather prominent here, playing counter-melodies against the guitars most of the time... I'm struggling to find much to say about the individual instruments here, because there's really not anything here out of the ordinary when you take influences into account. Amesoeurs have basically just taken standard elements from each of the genres and fused them, not really making a cohesive sound, but rather just mixing vaguely. Not so much making a milkshake, more lumping in some bananas, ice cream and milk and making the listener go at it with chopsticks.
Saying that I didn't enjoy the release would be lying, but actually pinning down parts which make the album worthy of some of some of the praise it gets is difficult. The music is very soothing and inoffensive, but so much so that it's like a salesman cooing sweet promises at you, wielding an innovative pink, fluffy toilet brush. After a while you start to look through the pink fluff and realise it's just like most of the other toilet brushes out there.
So take this as an apprehensive recommendation if you're looking for something to sit up with a cup of tea by the fire with, but otherwise, I'd look elsewhere.
Official Amoesoeurs Myspace
Official code666 Website
