Long before bands like Deafheaven and Woods Of Desolation were regularly supplying manna for those of us who can’t quite stomach the bracing grotesqueness of black metal at its blackest, Alcest was out there blackgazin’, blending black metal’s shrill intensity with celestial beauty. On Shelter, that beauty is all that’s left. It is a shoegaze album through and through, and it sounds not like shelter so much as soaring through the open sky, unencumbered and exhilarated. –Chris [LISTEN]