I think labels can be useful to a certain extent, simply because people need references to understand roughly what kind of music they're about to listen to. But we've never really thought about CELESTE in terms of genres. We don't sit down and decide that a song should sound more black metal, more hardcore or more post-metal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our music naturally comes from a mixture of everything we've listened to and loved over the years, and probably from things that have nothing to do with metal as well. What matters to us is much more the atmosphere, the emotion and the overall coherence of what we're creating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I don't mind people using labels to describe us \u2014 that's part of how music is discussed \u2014 but I wouldn't want those labels to define what CELESTE is or, even worse, to influence what we're allowed to do next. Actually, I think we're quite proud of the fact that CELESTE is difficult to categorize. In the end, we don't really make black metal, sludge, post-metal or hardcore \u2014 we make CELESTE. And I think our music is recognizable as CELESTE within just a few seconds of listening. To me, that's much more important than fitting into any particular genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This will be your first tour of Mexico and Latin America after nearly two decades as a band. Why did this encounter take so long to happen, and what does it mean to finally reach a region that has followed CELESTE from afar?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I think the main reason is simply that touring Latin America from Europe is complicated and expensive, especially for a band like us. We've always grown very organically, and we've never been the kind of band that suddenly had huge resources or could decide to tour anywhere in the world regardless of the financial reality behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a long time, playing Latin America felt like something we really wanted to do, but also something quite distant and difficult to make happen properly. We didn't want to come just for one or two shows either. If we were going to travel all the way there, we wanted it to be a real tour and to reach as many people and countries as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And to be completely transparent, even now that we've managed to make it happen, we already know that we're going to lose money on this tour. But at some point, that stopped being a good enough reason to postpone it again. We've already waited a very long time, and so have the people who have been asking us to come for years. We simply didn't feel like waiting any longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We've also heard so many times that the scene in Latin America is incredibly passionate and that audiences here are particularly expressive and intense at shows. Obviously, that's something we're really curious and excited to experience ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We've been seeing messages and comments from people here asking us to come for years, sometimes from places where we honestly never imagined people were listening to us. So finally being able to meet them means a lot. And the fact that, at this stage of the band, we can still travel somewhere completely unknown to us and have no idea what to expect is pretty special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The relationship between a band and its audience often changes when songs cross cultural and linguistic borders. What do you hope to discover about your own music by performing it before a Latin American audience for the first time?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I think one interesting thing about our music in this context is that the language barrier probably matters less than it would for many other bands. The lyrics are in French, of course, but a huge part of what we try to communicate comes through the music itself, the atmosphere, the intensity and the visual aspect of the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We've played in many countries where most of the audience doesn't understand French, and it has never really felt like an obstacle. Sometimes it can even make the relationship with the music more instinctive. People don't necessarily understand every word, but they understand the feeling behind it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I'm particularly curious about here is how that intensity will be reflected back at us. Our shows can be quite restrained in a way \u2014 there's a lot of tension in what we do \u2014 so I'm interested to see what happens when that meets a completely different cultural context and a different way of experiencing live music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Maybe we'll discover a different side of songs we've been playing for years. That's one of the great things about playing live: the songs don't completely belong to us anymore. The way an audience receives them can change the way we experience them ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your concerts create an intensely physical experience, but they can also produce a feeling of isolation, as though every spectator were locked inside their own perception. How do you construct that contrast between collective communion and individual solitude?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I don't think we consciously tried to create that contrast in the beginning. It came quite naturally from the way we wanted our shows to feel. There is obviously something very collective about the volume, the physical intensity and having everyone gathered in the same dark room, but at the same time, we don't really interact with the audience in the traditional sense. We don't talk much, we don't try to make people participate, and there are very few of the usual codes of a rock or metal show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The darkness and the red headlights also contribute a lot to that feeling. You can be surrounded by hundreds or thousands of people and still feel quite alone with what you're experiencing. In a way, everyone is watching the same show, but from inside their own little bubble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We really respect every way of experiencing our shows. Some people react very physically, some barely move, and some just stand there completely absorbed by it. All of those reactions are perfectly fine with us. But of course, we're human, and it feels great when people actually react, when you can see and feel that something is happening in the room and that the intensity we're putting out is coming back at us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That's something that, unfortunately, we feel is becoming a little less common in Europe. Audiences can sometimes be more restrained, maybe because there are so many shows and festivals happening all the time. So naturally, after touring Europe so extensively, we're curious to experience audiences elsewhere and see different ways of expressing that connection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, I really like that contradiction. We create this very individual, almost isolating experience, but when the audience reacts strongly, all of those individual experiences suddenly become something collective. And that's when a show can become really special for us too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/summainferno.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/image-25-1024x583.png\" "\\"\\"")
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