From left to right: Audrey S., Winterhalter, Neige, and Fursy T.
"Swallowed by the hive"
The band's original slogan.
Amesoeurs was a pioneering Black Metal / Shoegazing / Post-Punk band from Bagnols-sur-Cèze, France, a second forerunner for Blackgaze, a genre associated with bands like Alcest. While Alcest can be considered the Trope Codifier of the genre, Amesoeurs was the second-wing of the genre's post-punk elements.
The band was formed by Neige (of Alcest fame), Audrey Sylvain, and talented animator and artist Fursy Teyssier to show the Crapsack World of urban society, mixing in the feeling of bleakness and depression, hitting True Art Is Angsty levels, but in a good way.
Despite releasing an EP, a split with Valfunde (dead side project of Peste Noire) and having Jean "Winterhalter" Deflandre join as their drummer, the band sadly only lasted five years before abruptively ending due to arguments between the band (mainly Audrey and Neige) over the band's future, but got together one last time to record their Self Titled album as their Grand Finale.
Despite their small tenure, the band surprisingly enough had a huge impact within the post-black metal scene, causing some musicians to follow their style which surprisingly enough lead to decent sounding bands, and even helped launch Neige's career with Alcest even more than before, alongside with Fursy starting Les Discrets, Winterhalter joining Alcest and Les Discrets (although he ended up leaving the latter in 2013 by mutual agreement with Fursy to focus on Alcest), and Audrey went forward to join Peste Noire (for a while, anyway).
Amesoeurs is dead and another journey began.
Swallowed by the hive indeed.
The Artists
- Neige - Bass, Guitars, Keyboards, Vocals
- Audrey Sylvain - Bass, Piano, Vocals
- Fursey Teysseir - Bass, guitar
- Jean "Winterhalter" Deflandre - Drums
The Art
- 2005 - Ruines humains [EP] note
- 2007 - Valfunde/Amesoeurs Split
- 2009 - Amesoeurs
Tropes in veins...
- Album Title Drop/Band Name Drop: "Amesoeurs", which is the 10th track off of their Self-Titled Album by Amesoeurs. Fuck.
- Author Appeal: Neige's love of poetry by Charles Baudelaire shows up here too with "Recuelliement", which contains the actual poem of the same name written by him.
- Badass Creed: Somewhat with what was once posted on their MySpace however lost due to MySpace's revamping. Fortunately...
- Bilingual Bonus: Everything is in French.
- "Video Girl" plays with this; the song is still in French. "Trouble (Éveils infâmes)" is still a French title, despite the obvious English word. note
- Black Metal: Played with this trope, considering the fact that Neige was working on Alcest and he and Winterhalter were part of Peste Noire.
- Breather Episode: The track "I XIII V XIX XV V XXI XVIII XIX - IX XIX - IV V I IV" is a pure slow instrumental piano piece. A few other tracks, such as "Video Girl" and "Amesoeurs", may also qualify.
- Ruines humaines has "Faiblesse des Sens", though it's an unusual case of this trope in that it's the ending.
- Inverted with "Trouble (Éveils-infâmes)", which is sandwiched between two of the quietest songs on the album.
- Careful with That Axe: Audrey can deliver some harsh shrieks out of nowhere during some songs. Neige has his moments during each release, too.
- Crapsack World: Amesoeurs paint society as this, being a world of bleakness, loneliness, and full of disease and overall depression. This also fits Neige's mentality with city vs nature, as he has stated to feel alone and isolated within an urban environment compared to a nature environment.
- Deliberately Monochrome: All their photos were taken in black and white.
- Despair Event Horizon: Some of the songs invoke this at least from song translations such as the title track, "Au crépuscule de nos rêves", and "Faux Semblants".
- Epic Rocking: The longest song off the album is "Recueillement, ticking 7 minutes long. "Ruines humaines" is six and a half minutes long, and "Heurt" just barely scrapes by the six-minute mark.
- "Au crépuscule de nos rêves" plays with this. The length says eleven minutes and sixteen seconds, but the song ends at around 5:35 and there's silence until the final 2:22, where we're hit with a strange eletronic outro that makes up the rest of the track.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Trouble (Éveils-infâmes)" has this three times. The last one is borderline Bring My Brown Pants.
- Harsh Vocals: Duh. (See Careful with That Axe for more information).
- Hidden Track: The aforementioned strange electronic outro on the album.
- Last Note Nightmare: "Trouble (Éveils-infâmes)" has some Brown Note distorting by the end of the song and "La reine trayeuse" halfway has Audrey going on what sounds like a mental breakdown and divulging into a Madness Mantra.
- Loudness War: Mostly averted; the EP is DR8 and the album is DR9. However, the album still clips somewhat.
- Lyrical Dissonance: The album/band title track and "Heurt" have some pretty happy-like sounding beats...and then you read the lyrics. Pretty bleak stuff.
- Mood Whiplash: After the soothing "I XIII V XIX XV V XXI XVIII XIX - IX XIX - IV V I IV" you get hit with the intense "Trouble (Éveils-infâmes)". It's jolting to say the least. Then the album goes back to a relatively subdued state with "Video Girl", one of the quieter non-instrumentals on the album.
- Non-Indicative Name: "Amesoeurs" means 'Soulmates' in french, but considering the band's shitck...
- It's also sort of a Meaningful Name: Fursy said the name came from the fact he considered himself, Neige, and Audrey to be "soulmates", as in partners and best friends. Made what happened to them a lot depressing.
- Post-Punk: Has some rather elaborate influence of Post-punk mixed in with Shoegaze and Black Metal.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Amesoeurs is the blue to the red of Alcest: Amesoeurs is cold, raw, depressing, and isolated while Alcest is beauty, nostalgia, wistful, and hopeful (most times anyway). Alcest also portrays the world as beautiful and full of wonder, while Amesoeurs portrays the world as unloving, hateful, and filled with sorrow.
- Shout-Out: "Video Girl" is this to the romance manga Video Girl AI.
- Although this isn't officially confirmed, it's likely that the ending of "Trouble (Éveils-infâmes)" is one to the ending of "21st Century Schizoid Man" by King Crimson. Each song, which is already the heaviest on its respective album, devolves into utter cacophony with several false endings before transitioning straight into one of the quietest and most melodic songs on its respective album. The structure is similar enough to seem like a deliberate homage.
- Start My Own: Fursy went to form Les Discrets once Amesoeurs was shut down.
-
Spiritual Successor: Many of the Follow the Leader bands became this somewhat, mainly Lantlôs. Alcest, Les Discrets, and even some later Peste Noire material (particularly L’Ordure à l’état Pur) can also be considered this.- Les Discrets took it up to eleven with their third album Prédateurs, which featured their usual ambiance like sound mixed in with Audrey Hadron (Fursy's wife)'s lyrics but retaining a sound similar to the hidden track in Amesoeurs's debut.
- Spoken Word in Music: In "Reucuillement", there's spoken word from Markus Stock, vocalist of Empyrium (as well as the album's producer), as he recites the final part of Charles Baudelaire's poem of the same name.
- Soprano and Gravel: Neige and Audrey both shared vocal parts, Neige singing at least three songs off the album and Audrey singing half of it. Although Audrey could also do screams...
- Same could be said with Ruines humaines: Neige does only two songs and Audrey does the final track.
- Vinyl Bonus Content: Both vinyl releases of the self titled contain a demo version of "Gas in Veins".
- We Used to Be Friends: Neige, Fursy, and Audrey are these. Fursy mentioned in an interview that he, Audrey, and Neige formed Amesoeurs due to their disgust at the music that was around them during the time they lived in southern France, along with the tasteless of urban life. They were also incredibly close together and lamented how everything fell apart in 2008 when Audrey and Neige had their breakdown. Since 2009, Fursy, Neige, and Jean haven't contacted Audrey since and Audrey herself has since go on and off with projects that never seem to stick for her.
