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Bloody Sign > Chaos Echoes > Reviews
Bloody Sign - Chaos Echoes

New York Death Metal Meets French Blackcore - 80%

FullMetalAttorney, January 6th, 2011

I discovered Bloody Sign by way of a list of the top 10 old-school death metal albums of 2010 over at Invisible Oranges. They were a French blackened death metal band begun in 1995, and Chaos Echoes is their third album.

They play a style that seems to be a blend of New York death metal (e.g. Incantation) and French hardcore-inflected black metal (e.g. Celeste). The drummer, in fact, played for Incantation. As in NYDM, the tempos change up often within a single song, or even within a single riff. As in French HC/BM (or blackcore, as I'm choosing to call it), the guitars often go into dissonant territory or simply make guitar noises for effect. The result is like Behemoth if they had a much broader sonic palette but less dominant technical skills. The vocals are less commanding than Nergal's, but in the same style.

The album starts with an intro, and ends on an outro (which is a backmasked version of the intro). Each instrument gets its due on its own solo track, as well as in the songs. The bass is very prominent, and becomes moreso during the guitar solos. The songs and many of the riffs are memorable, from the hard-driving "For the Unknown" to the epic "The Call". The only serious misstep is the ill-advised punk-style backup vocals on "Words of Death". "Tongues of Shadows" is the album standout: It's seriously frightening, with tempo and riff changes fitting together perfectly, and atmosphere provided not only by guitar noises, but by some clean singing that reminds me of those Islamic prayers.

The production is well worth mentioning as well. As I noted, you can hear the bass throughout the album. The drums also sound like drums, and the whole recording has a natural sound that's clear, but not over-polished.

The Verdict: This is a very interesting death metal release, and just one more piece of evidence that the French metal scene is on the verge of exploding. It's only too bad this band broke up.

originally written for http://fullmetalattorney.blogspot.com/

Setting their own course - 75%

Lane, November 20th, 2010

"To the hell with the rules, I am going for the unknown." From the abyss of space and time, terrible sounds emanate. Behold! It is 'Chaos Echoes', the third coming (if counting the full length albums only) of this French horde. Bloody Sign's magic potion is mixed from extreme metal, death and black, and to some extent, even doom.

In the hands of these three guys, at times the chaos is taken in control, but sometimes chaos reigns. They said in the Carbonized Cells webzine interview, that "the music possesses us, runs through our veins." Thus they control some of it, but partly it comes out uncontrolled. The chaotic bits are not unmusical, but are of grotesque forms. Sound wise Bloody Sign are a bit more on black metal side of the things-there is a lot of open-string guitar and disharmonic playing, pounding and echoing drums and bass, and agonized vocals.

It is not surprising, that stylistically the black metal element resembles that of mad and twisted French BM. Shredding riffage and twisted Morbid Angel / Immolation guitar parts come from a death metal field. There are both primitive and some more technical moments heard on this album, but clearly the former one is the dominant style. The songs are still pretty much multi-layered, and therefore "Chaos Echoes" requires unremitting attention from a listener. Which is further intensified by the fact that the songs are far cries from typical easy metal songwriting formulas. The music's pace is commonly in fluctuation, ranging from fast blast beat punishment to slow, building spots. Three interludes (one for guitar, bass and drums) give short breathers for listener, but do not really cut the flow of madness in any way. Actually, this album feels like one, long sonical journey. The band's music is something a bit different.

Lyrical themes circle around music and Lovecraftian horrors (massive beast called 'The Call'). In two words: great things! Sound is raw, but all the instruments and growled and shouted vocals (with some lines of Simen Hestnaes sounding clean singing too) are all well-balanced with each other. As mentioned, there are multiple planes in the music, some being more hidden.

'Chaos Echoes' invokes elemental changes in the universe, where there is so much to be found to us human beings. Both good and evil forces and matter. Are you ready to hear it, because I believe that with this album, Bloody Sign have opened doors to other universes (hell being just one of the universes in multiverse)?

Intruiging, dark, utterly obscure.... - 85%

dismember_marcin, September 21st, 2010

Honestly I've been really looking forward to listen to this album, third one from these French zombies. I've been doing so for two main reasons. One being the fact that I know BLOODY SIGN's music already since they released their "Primitive Horde" demo in 2001, but it was mainly their debut LP "Vana Vigala Loits" that caused the chaos and made me promote the band on the pages of my old Panzerfaust zine. After the brilliant debut another great tunes have been recorded on few splits or EPs, so yeah... Definitely BLOODY SIGN became one of my favourite underground death crews at the time of middle 00's. But then the second album came out. And that's the reason number two, why I was looking forward to hear "Chaos Echoes"... It's the fact that I haven't enjoyed “Explosion of Elements” much, almost felt that the album is dull and uninspiring. The band has changed stylistically a bit on it, but it came with very monotonous and weird music. So, I kind of hoped that with "Chaos Echoes" BLOODY SIGN will make me up for the previous small failure... And so they fuckin did!

Although I'm again really surprised - positively this time - that BLOODY SIGN has taken yet another different path in their underground crusade. It's not as much a step forward as more to the left (hand path), as they sound now completely different that they used to on the first LP. Don't know if it's a matter of production, but "Chaos Echoes" got totally black metal sound! It sounds so dark and sinister that during the opening theme of „Chord Temple” I had an impression someone putted WATAIN or ONDSKAPT album to the player, not BLOODY SIGN! It does has a total vibe of orthodox, religious black metal act from Sweden and the sound similar to the NECROMORBUS productions - just listen to these guitars and drums... But it's not just that, the sound can't change the band so much; it's also the music on „Chaos Echoes”, which is so different and hard to classify. I may of course call it avantgarde death metal or rather avantgardish death / black metal, but the point is that it's something I would never expect from BLODY SIGN and I guess anyone who really enjoyed their old school, classic death metal music from the first album may have some problems with "Chaos Echoes".

But the main motto of "Chaos Echoes" says „To hell with the rules, I am going for the unknown” and that can tell you much. Just listen to these riffs, arrangements, fell this obscure atmosphere! Fast, furious riffs are accompanied by some totally cacophonic solos and some weird, lunatic parts; all covered by the black metal dirt and mood, giving very claustrophobic, mysterious and incredibly dark music. It almost has a ritualistic feel, in which two opposite elements collide with each other; which has so many layers that it may be a real challenge for some listeners. Let's pick up few examples. "Chord Temple" is the first, obvious one as it opens the album with fast, slaying black metal part, which suddenly stops and gives a place to a cacophonic solo, which sounds like it just shouldn't be there and only interrupts. What a weird idea. "The Call", one of the best songs actually, reminds me more of say DEATHSPELL OMEGA than INCANTATION, but it's mainly due to that great, slow opening riff, which creates an awesome atmosphere like something was crawling in the dark towards you, giving you creeps (have you seen that Spanish horror, "Rec"? watch its final), later changing into total slaughtering riffage. „Words of Death” has probably the catchiest fast riff of the entire album, this is also a song, which has the most classic and simple structure, unlike everything else on "Chaos Echoes".

I cannot forget about all those short instrumentals, which are really schizophrenic and weird and which make me think of "Chaos Echoes" as an concept album. I have to add that I haven't had time to look through the lyrics yet, but the booklet and everything here looks very enigmatic and intriguing. I'll surely try to look at it later. All I can say at the end is that BLOODY SIGN delivered really great, but unexpected album. Stylistically it's something I just didn't expect to hear; often more black than death metal in the atmosphere, what I think places those French maniacs among such bands as PORTAL and STARGAZER - the most unique and mysterious, untypical death metal bands of nowadays scene. Great listening anyway, I've enjoyed it much and it's also released by one of my favourite labels, Swedish BLOOD HARVEST, so what else can I ask for?

Bloody Sign - Chaos echoes - 70%

Phuling, June 14th, 2010

When I first heard Bloody Sign quite some years ago I wasn’t really impressed. Why everybody else seemed to think they were so good I couldn’t understand, I just found them to be another run-of-the-mill death/black band. So I’ve never bothered to check out their previous albums, and here we have a third one. Whereas I can’t tell any differences in between albums, development or progression, I can tell you they’ve definitely improved since I last heard them.

One of the first things that came to mind when Chord temple set in was how it reminded me of Revelation of Doom, with an extra dose of black metal. Shortly after that Throneum came to mind, but minus the thrash. And it didn’t take long before Dead Congregation popped up, but with less brutality and more mystical aspects. Many more acts have made a quick flash by in my library of comparisons, at one moment I even thought of Dissection. But I think that might’ve been more due to the mystical and ritual touches and not for the actual musical similarities. Nevertheless, Chaos echoes comes off as quite European sounding, with a flair of both North and South America (a little of both Incantation and Infinitum Obscure). The base of it all feels like pretty straight forward old school death, but with a more sinister approach. It’s more than a mere hail to the Scandinavian or Floridian scene (for instance), but like taking a classic recipe and bastardizing the hell out of it. They do that by adding some modern twists to their sound, and a load of black metal harshness.

Drum-wise they offer a wide variety of patterns, a lot of them highly unorthodox. They also spruce things up with tons of tempo changes and weird semi-ritualistic instrumental sections, all of which adds to the unorthodox and mystical flair of it all. Bloody Sign also presents quite lethal riffing, but with all this power there’s still something that keeps me from being engulfed by it. They do everything right, but I just can’t seem to feel the full impact. I don’t know why, I should love it, but for some reason I stop at just liking it. The only thing that truly bugs me with the album are the fucked up Roman numerals in the tracklist (4 is written as IIII and 9 as VIIII). Other than that it’s pretty much all good, so don’t take my hesitation to hail Chaos echoes as a masterpiece the wrong way.

Originally written for http://www.mylastchapter.net