Review Summary: A good debut out of Istanbul
This year has not been much an exciting one for some progressive metal fans. The hopes for much – awaited Necrophagist and Gojira releases were destroyed. Although BTBAM’s EP, Mastodon’s epic release and Devin Townsend’s controversial “Deconstruction” led many of us to have some thrilling moments, I don’t think it would be so reasonable to say that 2011 has been a star year to remember for all progressive fans.
But meanwhile in İstanbul, a group of people were putting their hands to the plow to create a qualified progressive death metal album. Their influences cover a wide range of genres from melodic death metal to black metal, but summing up their very own style, I can pretty much say that they are a progressive death metal band. Let me cut the genre crap short and start talking about the album.
Beginning from the very first moment, one can realize that they try hard to come up with something tasty. The intro track, called “Adrift” will lead almost everyone to incline their ears. But this is not only the intro that keep the listener going; it is obvious that so much thought and effort went into this whole album from beginning to end.
The more material you have, the harder it gets to combine them all to make an album. As we all know this is what actually makes it really challenging and tough to create progressive music. You may have some cool stuff to record, but unless you’re extra careful, *** awaits you. That’s why many of the progressive bands have a huge potential of screwing up their debuts. “Of Oceans And Raindrops" never gives such an impression.
Thrown to the Sun has a good amount of material in many aspects. Sonorous vocals get into various forms. Being generally melodic, guitar riffs and solos also intersperse atonal tunes that drags the things towards a schizophrenic – like mood. The riffs have a very good balance of repetition; nothing’s overrepeated, nor played only once. Few and far between, you can understand from the guitar riffs and drums that there’s an influence of bands such as Mastodon, Gojira, Death etc.
Fretless bass guitar is very active and the bass parts are highlighted most times. Drums present a successful performance in making the infrastructure tighter. Each song has its unique character and some of them will surprise you with unpredicted changes like a sudden involvement of keyboards.
The album also gets attention by its plain but beautiful cover and artworks. I think they also made a good decision in making a free-to-download album from their main website.
In “Of Oceans And Raindrops”, one can simply find everything that is required to make an elaborate progressive metal album: Well structured technicality (no wankery, but mostly detailed riffs and drums), groove, a good bass sound, bass both as a supplementary and as an independent instrument, interesting vocal variations, intense emotions, sophisticated lyrics; sharp, cleverly arranged shifts in the flow of music that astound the listener, catchy melodies, and the list goes on.
