Alcest have dated their first live album. Live At Hellfest 2022 comes out on 4 December through Nuclear Blast, and Protection is out from it now.
Twenty seven years is a long time to go without one. Neige started the project in 1999 and has released seven studio albums under the name, and in all that time the live side of the band has existed only in bootlegs and festival footage. Metal Hammer Italia carries the tracklist, and it reads like a deliberate arc rather than a setlist: Les jardins de minuit and Protection from the early records, Sapphire and Kodama from the middle, Delivrance to close.
Eight songs is short for a live album, and that is what a festival slot gives you. The recording is from 2022, in the stretch between Spiritual Instinct and Les Chants de l'Aurore, so what is on the record is a festival performance rather than a headline show stretched out to fill a disc.
The oldest song on it goes back to Souvenirs d'un autre monde in 2007, the record that made people argue about whether this was black metal at all. Fifteen years later it was still in the set.