Chaos Echoes : "Transient"

Yesterday I was dotting my eyes and crossing my burning churches to make sure  I had ingested all the black metal I could to solidify my end of the year black metal list, while none of those bands I reviewed yesterday made the list it was good to hear even mediocre black metal to put the best in perspective, so now I am doing similar with death metal today, starting with this band from France. I was just thinking yesterday how some of the best black metal was beginning churned out of France because it was very experimental and the bands all had their signature sounds, now the Deathspell Omega band wagon is being pounced up death metal but we carrying the flames of creativity there. The first song would be an instrumental if it was not for the very ritualistic chanting in the background. At nine minutes it cast a spell on me because it seemed like time stopped.

Entering the next song which breaks the twelve minute mark they begin to push their toying with noise and ambiance much further letting it draw out into something that sounds like Sun Ra playing the intro to " Mob Rules".  Once it gets to the eight minute mark even if  the metal kicks in it will be outweighed by this excursion in the astral plane of free form jazz.' "Advent of My Genesis " finds the metal returning as a  sluggish feedback drenched dirge. The drums take it upon themselves to stir things up to a boiling point, until the vocals finally come in. They have almost more of a black metal snarl , but if you think about it Carcass sometimes uses a similar tone. This almost sounds like what might happen if  Swans played death metal. That is a hard sound to argue against. They follow this up with another excursion into noise. At six minutes you can almost write this one off as an interlude, where their previous piece of abrasion was harder to laugh off at over twelve.

When it's full blast ahead, even the buzz of sonic fury doesn't have the same appeal as the din they raised earlier in the album . This does die down and the more ritualistic chants start back up. To their credit it is a very original take on death metal .The next "Interzone" piece sounds like something from a Fantomas album as the spoke vocals are a low croak instead of growled. The closing song "Soul Ruiner" is really only metal by way of its dna. It's also atonal  jazz rock with a burly bass line driving it until the drummer speeds things up like he took a hit of crack. Even with the obtuse droning portions of noise this still deserves an 8 just because of how original and daring this is . More likely to make my top ten experimental metal albums .