Alcest will embark on a new Latin American tour in February 2027. The French band have confirmed twelve concerts across Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Argentina and Brazil, with the run taking place between February 3 and 21.
The tour will begin in Mexico, where Neige, Winterhalter and their live band will play four shows in five days. The opening concert takes place at Café Iguana in Monterrey on February 3, followed by Black Box in Tijuana on February 4, C3 Stage in Guadalajara on February 6 and Circo Volador in Mexico City on February 7.
After completing the Mexican leg, Alcest will travel to San José, Bogotá, Lima, Santiago and Buenos Aires. The tour will conclude with three consecutive Brazilian shows: Rio de Janeiro on February 19, São Paulo on February 20 and Curitiba on February 21.
The new itinerary finds the band in a particularly strong chapter. More than two decades after Neige began moving away from traditional black metal to develop a far more personal musical language, Alcest still occupy a singular place in heavy music: instantly recognizable, yet difficult to contain under any single label.
Ticket sales, prices and schedules will be announced by the local promoter responsible for each concert.
The story of Alcest began in France in 2000, initially as a black metal project led by Stéphane “Neige” Paut. That first incarnation produced the Tristesse hivernale demo in 2001, but the band’s direction changed decisively four years later with the release of Le Secret.
The 2005 EP brought together elements that rarely appeared on the same recording at the time: black metal guitars, screamed vocals, enveloping melodies, long contemplative passages and a sensibility closely related to shoegaze. Neige was not trying to soften metal or turn it into ambient music. He wanted to translate childhood memories and spiritual experiences connected to a distant, luminous world separated from everyday reality.
Le Secret became one of the foundational releases of the sound that would later be identified as blackgaze. Alcest’s influence expanded through 2007’s Souvenirs d’un autre monde and 2010’s Écailles de lune, two albums that helped erase the borders between atmospheric black metal, post-rock and shoegaze without treating those styles as artificially assembled parts.
The arrival of Jean “Winterhalter” Deflandre in 2009 was equally important. His drumming gave precision and force to music that depends as much on silent details as it does on its most violent eruptions. Since then, Neige and Winterhalter have remained Alcest’s core, joined onstage by guitarist Pierre “Zero” Corson and bassist Indria Saray.
A Discography Built Around Change
Alcest have never remained in one place for long. Released in 2012, Les Voyages de l’âme expanded the project’s melodic identity before Shelter removed nearly every trace of metal in 2014. Recorded in Iceland with Birgir Jón Birgisson, the fourth album openly embraced dream pop and shoegaze, with contributions from Amiina and Slowdive member Neil Halstead.
The decision divided part of the band’s audience, but it confirmed that Alcest had no interest in repeating a formula simply because it had begun influencing other musicians. Two years later, Kodama brought back aggressive guitars and extreme vocals on an album inspired by Japanese art and, particularly, Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.
Spiritual Instinct pushed that darker and more physical side even further in 2019. It also marked Alcest’s arrival at Nuclear Blast, following a long relationship with Prophecy Productions. By that point, the combination the band first explored on Le Secret could be heard throughout numerous European, North American and Asian scenes.
That influence is not limited to the creation of a genre tag. Alcest made room for vulnerability, beauty and introspection within extreme music without presenting those qualities as opposites. Their presence can be felt throughout contemporary post-black metal, although few bands have reproduced the ease with which Neige moves from a fragile melody into an abrasive surge.
Alcest Will Arrive During the Les Chants de l’Aurore Era
The Latin American tour will take place during the cycle for Les Chants de l’Aurore, Alcest’s seventh album, released on June 21, 2024. Arriving five years after Spiritual Instinct, the record moved toward a more luminous form of music without abandoning the weight accumulated during the band’s previous eras.
On “Komorebi,” “L’Envol,” “Flamme Jumelle,” “Améthyste” and “L’Enfant de la Lune,” Neige returned to the spiritual world that inspired Alcest’s earliest years. He did not, however, attempt to reconstruct Souvenirs d’un autre monde. The compositions sound broader, more detailed and assured, supported by a creative partnership with Winterhalter that now spans more than fifteen years.
The band’s recent concerts have brought this material together with songs from across its catalog. “Écailles de lune,” “Autre temps,” “Protection,” “Kodama” and “Souvenirs d’un autre monde” have appeared alongside the newer pieces, revealing how much Alcest have changed without losing the thread connecting their seven albums.
That continuity becomes particularly clear onstage. The performance can move from clean vocals and reverberating guitars into blast beats, screams and layers of distortion without making the transition feel calculated. Alcest have refined that dynamic through years of international touring, building an audience that exists beyond the traditional separation between metal and alternative music.
