Alcest - Spiritual Instinct (LP) - Green Vinyl

By the time Alcest reached Spiritual Instinct in 2019, the French duo had already mapped out most of the blackgaze landscape. This sixth full-length arrived on Nuclear Blast and felt like a deliberate tightening of the screws, a darker and leaner counterpart to the widescreen glow of Shelter and the luminous drift of Kodama. It plays like a statement of purpose, with Neige’s melodic instincts locked in step with Winterhalter’s athletic drumming, and a renewed taste for bite alongside all that air and shimmer.

The opener, Les Jardins de Minuit, sets the mood with a rush of tremolo guitar that doesn’t bulldoze as much as it billows. Alcest are still masters of that paradox. Chords blur like shoegaze, yet the rhythms cut with a black metal snap. You can feel the higher stakes in Neige’s voice. Those harsh vocals return as punctuation, not a blanket, and that choice keeps the songs moving between beauty and urgency rather than falling into one texture. The record is only six tracks, about forty minutes, but there’s no filler. It’s built for repeat plays, the kind of album you flip and start again without thinking.

Protection was the lead calling card and still hits hardest. The riff is simple and insistent, the kind that seems to pull light out of a grey sky, and Winterhalter’s blasts arrive like a tide rather than a battering ram. Sapphire, the other early single, is the band at their most iridescent. Guitars chime in layers that feel almost choral, and the rhythm section keeps the whole thing from floating away. If you ever try to explain blackgaze to a friend who only knows Slowdive and Mayhem by name, Sapphire is where you send them. It walks that line with real grace.

The record leans into image and atmosphere without losing muscle. L’Île des Morts carries a title that nods to a familiar symbol from art history and moves like a slow procession, stately but tense. Le Miroir is a late-album stunner, a patient climb with glassy guitars and one of Neige’s most affecting clean melodies. The closer, Spiritual Instinct, ties the threads together. It sounds like resolve. Not triumph in a cheesy way, more the feeling that comes after you’ve stared at something difficult and decided to keep going.

What makes the album stick is balance. There is a clarity to the production that lets you live inside the arrangements. You hear the bass carve out its own path, the crash of cymbals decaying into the halo of guitar, and the vocals sitting just inside the fog. Alcest have always been tasteful about dynamics, but here the pushes and pulls are tighter, almost songcraft-first. It reads as a response to a heavy touring cycle and the creative exhale that follows. In interviews around release, Neige talked about reconnecting with the inner life that set this band in motion in the first place. You can hear that push toward something essential.

Spiritual Instinct landed well with listeners for good reason. Fans who missed the bite on Shelter got the teeth back, and those drawn to the dreamlike side of Alcest found no shortage of glow. It’s also a strong entry point for anyone browsing a rack and wondering where to start. If you spot Spiritual Instinct vinyl in the bins, it is a safe blind buy, one of those records that suits a late-night spin as much as a clear morning. The pressing has a depth that flatters these tones, and Alcest albums on vinyl tend to hold their value because they actually get played. If you are trying to buy Alcest records online, this is the one that will live on your turntable instead of your shelf.

The band’s story keeps expanding, but this album feels like a circle closing. It acknowledges their roots, keeps the melody forward, and reminds you why this project pulled so many people toward it in the first place. For anyone digging through a Melbourne record store or scanning vinyl records Australia listings, Spiritual Instinct vinyl is one of those spine titles that makes the whole section feel richer. It’s Alcest in focus, and it sounds like belief.