sustain

Chaos Echoes and Mats Gustafsson's Disharmonic "Sustain"

sustain

Just weeks ago, Chaos Echoes’s Mouvement was a brazen declaration of claustrophobic death metal with an unprecedented, avant-jazz backbone. That being said, these French adventurers have never just been a death metal band. Recalling the recently reissued Occursus Series EP and rehearsal trilogy, this fluid lineup cut their teeth in psychedelia, krautrock, and meditative free-improv. There is an old saying: “variety is the spice of life,” and Chaos Echoes is certainly well-seasoned.

In an unexpected pairing, legendary avant-jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson (The Thing, many collaborations) lends his pointillist brasswind sounds to Chaos Echoes in the band’s first collaborative outing, Sustain. If Mouvement presented the aforementioned death metal with a jazz backbone, the Sustain collaboration is avant-garde/free jazz with the weight and spirit of death metal at its heaviest. A bizarre melange of chiming tension and clattering discord, the album’s two halves complete Chaos Echoes’s prismatic approach, exposing new elements of their creativity and musical mastery. With Gustafsson’s practiced hand and grasp of extra-instrumental sounds at the helm, Sustain‘s long tones balance nightmarish sounds within a dreamlike expanse.

Sustain will be released by Utech Records (LP, CS, and digital) on April 13th — preorders are open here.

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Follow Mats Gustafsson on Bandcamp.