Amras Numenesse - Death of Innocence (2024)

Country: Turkey
Style: Symphonic Black Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 25 Aug 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Amras Numenesse isn't only a band, it's also the name of its only member, who provides the vocals and all the instrumentation, though the soaring female vocals within the orchestration suggests a use of guests or samples. Amras is a very busy man, having knocked out no fewer than a dozen new albums since 2018, but oddly none before that going back to 1997 when Metal Archives credits this project as being founded. Maybe that's when he was born. Judging from photos on Facebook, he's bolstered by other musicians on stage, but I believe it's just him in the studio.

Death of Innocence is his second for 2024, after Cyclical Process in January, and it's far better than I might expect for such prolificity, especially given how capably the metal instrumentation meshes with whatever's happening in the background in a symphonic vein. In fact, the orchestration often introduces a piece, like the opener, Rise from the Ashes, then takes a back seat to the traditional metal instruments: harsh voice, bass, guitar and frantic drums. Sometimes, it stays prominent, as a more crucial part of the song, starting on Revenge.

On Revenge, Amras almost takes a back seat to the orchestration and choir, letting them provide the melodies that float over the bedrock he lays down and delineate the piece. As I Am God starts out, bringing in a horn section on top of the strings, I wondered all the more where Amras got this texture from. I have to assume that a one man black metal band in İzmir, one of the most westerly towns in Turkey, peeking across the Aegean at Athens, can't afford a full choir and orchestra. It's highly effective, so I presume he's either creating it with synths or using samples. Inquiring minds want to know.

However, he's doing it, I'd also like to know the order in which he composes. Does he generate that orchestration and then bulk it up with metal instruments and vocals, or does he write with guitar, deepen it with bass and drums and then add the backdrop later? Either way, it works and keeps an otherwise relatively straightforward extreme metal album interesting. These songs wouldn't all sound the same without the orchestration, especially given such a flamboyant keyboard intro to kick off Uniting the Gods, but they'd come a lot closer to it than they do now.

That's because the guitar tone is consistent throughout and so's Amras's voice, which is a rich and resonant deep growl with a strong sustain. I have no idea what he's singing, of course, but he has what seems to be good intonation, so I found myself paying close attention to it more than I would the typical black metal vocal. Sure, it's just another instrument in the mix, but it's a commanding one rather than merely a texture. In fact, it may even be commanding in the English language, as the song titles certainly are, but it remained impenetrable to me, at least until the chorus of the closer, Fuck Your God.

Revenge probably remains my favourite track, even after a few listens, but I am God after it comes pretty close, and I'm rather fond of Demigod, which even adds a slight ethnic flavour. Most of this could have come from almost anywhere, the orchestration quintessentially European in approach but the extreme metal universal. However, Demigod occasionally dips into something that sounds more obviously Turkish. Clearly this isn't folk metal, but it was a tasty hint at something I'd like to have heard more of. Maybe it's more obvious on another Amras Numenesse album, given that one benefit of being a one man band is taking the sound wherever you like without musical differences creeping into play.

This is my first Amras Numenesse album. Coming in almost entirely blind, knowing only what I saw through some brief research on Metal Archives, I was mostly interested in how a one man Turkish symphonic black metal band might sound. I wasn't expecting it to sound this good or this abiding, but it only grew on me over a few listens. Maybe that's the death of my innocence. I know what it sounds like now and, while I'm not likely to explore all twelve of these albums (thus far), I am very intrigued to pick out an early one and see how it compares to this.

Yaşru - Bilinmeze (2024)

Country: Turkey
Style: Doom Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 20 Apr 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

Yaşru have been around since 2009 and they play doom metal with occasional folk elements and an atmospheric overlay. This is their sixth album, but it's my first by them and I'm impressed. I do like my doom and I like it even more when it crosses into folk metal, as this does often. Both Dünya and Gün Batımında open with long intros of Berk Öner playing ethnic Turkish instruments and I'd be up for listening to both these songs even if they didn't eventually heavy up with metal crunch. There's also a clean vocal in the latter, and it becomes more frequent as the album runs on, making for an additional obvious folk element.

Initially, Öner, who sings and plays guitar in addition to those ethnic instruments, sings harsh, but it's a growl that aims for texture rather than aggression. Sometimes it's forceful and sometimes gentle, but it has a rich timbre that reminded me of Seigneur V. Sangdragon from Winds of Sirius, a French gothic metal band I wish had recorded more than one album. This approach continues to grow with the album too, perhaps most evident on the title track, when it's a gentle rumble that's happy to play with emphasis under the atmospheric keyboard overlay.

Dünya is a wonderful opening track, the longest song on the album at a breath over eight minutes and one that builds over that time. After that folk intro, it finds a groove and milks it, with Öner's voice gradually growing as it goes, initially buried so deeply in the mix that it seems to be more of a texture than a delivery mechanism for lyrics but eventually taking over as the focal point. Much of the groove comes from a repetitive riff, Öner's guitar merging with Ömer Serezli's bass, but an evocative keyboard layer keeps it constantly interesting.

I'm not seeing anyone credited on keyboards and it sounds far too electronic to count as another ethnic instrument, but those keyboards shape Yaşru's sound far more substantially than I thought on a first listen. They never seem to do anything flash, just add a slowly dancing texture over what the traditional instruments are doing. However, the resulting combination draws us into an almost trance state and we start imagining that it's doing things that I seriously doubt it's actually doing, like veering into choral effects. I'm pretty sure they're not there, but I kept hearing them anyway.

Bilinmeze translates from the Turkish as Into the Unknown and there's some of that here, Kozmik Yolculuk being roughly what you think it is, a Cosmic Journey. However, unknown here felt like the shadowy world of dream rather than the far reaches of space. These journeys aren't taking us just to somewhere we've never been, which the folk elements might suggest, but a different world on which the rules we're used to reality following simply don't apply. Certainly, time seemed to pass at a different rate while I listened. It's not a particularly long album, at just over half an hour, but it's at once over in a blink and substantial enough to last forever.

Maybe that's partly because Yaşru don't seem to vary what they do but actually evolve across the course of the album. Dünya has that ethnic intro, but it finds its groove and pretty much stays on it throughout, Kozmik Yolculuk following suit. When Gün Batımında shifts back to the ethnic intro approach, we think we're looping back to hear another Dünya, but it adds the clean voice that's a nudge further into folk metal. That returns on the title track and, by the time Son Nefes wraps up the album, appropriately enough given that it means Last Breath, we start to wonder how much of the vocals were clean. Over the first half of the album, not a heck of a lot. Over the second half, surely a far more considerable amount.

I liked Dünya immediately and I keep coming back to it, but the other songs keep growing on me. Bilinmeze is a full minute shorter and it seems to have a much simpler groove, but it won't leave me be. I fall into it every time through, never mind that I don't understand the Turkish lyrics and never mind how much more I notice Serezli's elegant bass runs on each subsequent listen. It's just hypnotic to me, perhaps even more than the album as a whole. So I'll call out Dünya and Bilinmeze as highlights, along with Gün Batımında, which means At Sunset.

Three highlights out of five means an 8/10, I think, and I don't want to move on to something else. This album is already becoming an old friend. I have a feeling I might be coming back to this often for feelgood purposes. I feel acutely comfortable in its company but it also refuses to let me think too deeply about it. It's one of those albums that will always be there, doing its thing regardless of what I might want but bleeding closer into my veins as it does so. Now I have five earlier albums to explore to see how Yaşru got to this sound. I look forward to the yolculuk.

Özgür Aydın - Harvest (2023)

Country: Turkey
Style: Blues Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 17 Mar 2023
Sites: Bandcamp

This is going to seem like easy listening after ...and Oceans and the sweater Özgür Aydın's wearing on the cover doesn't help—no, I'm not judging, because I covet both those chairs—but it's perfect as a palate cleanser. It's bluesy but it feels uplifting and song titles like Joy, Harvest and Circle of Energy feel entirely appropriate. It's also entirely instrumental, because Aydın is a guitarist—not to be confused with the concert pianist of the same name—and he sees his job as conjuring moods out of his guitar. I could easily see some of these pieces being used on soundtracks.

It actually starts out lighter than it ends up, because there's a long intro to Earth Mother to set us in a calm frame of mind before Aydın's electric guitar joins in around the minute mark. From that point, we're firmly in the vibe of the album and the rest continues in much the same vein. It's soft music but it has substance and it feels delightful. For comparisons, I'd suggest Mark Knopfler with no hesitation, but there's some Dave Gilmour in there too. Like them, Aydın is economical with his notes but he plays and manipulates all the ones that need to be there to do the job at hand.

Earth Mother is a decent opener, enough to keep me listening, but I found myself enjoying this all the more as it ran on. From Earth Mother to Air and Water—if you're waiting for fire, you'll be out of luck—and a more thoughtful piece. Much of what Aydın does is introspective, but this one has a story arc like, say, Knopfler's Going Home, and the backing emphasises its build well. I should add that this isn't just solo guitar; someone, maybe Aydın himself, is playing bass and drums, often keyboards as well. I can't find credits online, only the suggestion that there isn't a standing band behind him.

What's important about the backing musicians, whoever they are, is that they rarely seek out the spotlight, content to accompany Aydın in relatively simple fashion, a clear contrast to the guitar, which has plenty to say. Also, the backing tracks don't vary much from track to track, so leaving the guitar full control to change the tone, mood or anything else. For instance, Aydın is vehement on Land, in the sense that he's more forceful with the strings rather than playing faster or heavier. I heard a lot of what Robbie Blunt did on Robert Plant's Big Log on this one.

For a while, every track seems to be better than the last, but Food plays more like an extension to Land than the next track. I like Land so much that I'm not sure I'd put anything else here above it, but Circle of Energy is exactly what it suggests and it gets me every time. It's certainly the perkiest piece on the album, with a real bounce in its step. Joy follows it well, even if it just stops when its time is up, and that leaves the title track to close out, which is oddly the shortest piece on offer.

In fact, not only is Harvest the track the shortest on Harvest the album, but the latter feels a little skimpy, only just sneaking past twenty five minutes. I don't know if it's being considered an album or just a mini-album, not that it particularly matters except that if it's advertised as the former, I would have preferred a few more tracks tacked onto the end. Aydın has a pleasant laid back style that's very easy to listen to, so he could easily get away with longer albums than many far better known guitarists who impress wildly but only in smaller doses.

Maybe that's simply a prompt to go and check out his five previous albums, which are all available on his Bandcamp page. This one isn't, for reasons of which I'm blissfully unaware. The prior three are similarly short, following the same seven song template, but the first couple seem longer, with 2018's 12th Street far more generous, boasting ten tracks, most of them in the four or five minute range. Maybe I'll pick that one up and see how he's developed in a decade and a half.

Rivers of Sorrow - Existence Beyond Emptiness (2021)

Country: Turkey
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 19 Nov 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube

It's been almost three years since I reviewed a doom/death album from Turkey, so it's about time I listened to another one. The one in 2019 was Of Past and Passion, the solid debut from Forgotten, a six piece band who hail from Ankara, that nation's capital if not remotely its largest city. Rivers of Sorrow is also based in Ankara, but it's a one man project created by... well, I have absolutely no idea because I'm not finding any other information about the band online at all.

It's capable stuff, though it takes a while to establish itself. It starts ambitiously, with a nine and a half minute opener, Night Queen, with piano bookends and quite a journey in between. Sadly, the intro is simple and derivative and the song itself ends up in a Golden Brown decorated rhythm, an unusual song to come down the years as the Stranglers' biggest hit but an even more unusual one to constantly come to mind during the second half of a Turkish doom/death song. The end is much more like it, the piano beautifully played with a real sense of melancholy.

The other catch for me is that the vocals are hardly sophisticated. They're there and they do what they need to do, but that's about all during Night Queen and the much shorter second track, Cold Flares of Sun, which does at least find some interesting warmth. It was only the keyboard work on that opener that kept me listening. And I'm happy that I did, because it gets a lot better, as of the third song, Dreams without Hope (Genetic Disease), which is a real gem.

This one starts out more urgently and more confidently, and with ethnic melodies floating around in the background. The vocals are much more interesting too, deeper and more guttural, as if this singer didn't mean it for two tracks but absolutely does now. I was onboard from the outset, but it only gets better. Just as we're getting used to how Rivers of Sorrow sound at a more urgent pace, that pace is ruthlessly cut down in its prime with an utterly glorious slowdown that kicks in just as we're hitting the two minute mark.

I adore this midsection, which seemed to evoke the cover art. If that's water, with light filtering in but only so far, then that's where this starts. Then the song dives deep into the abyss, all the light gone, but we see something anyway and that's a fantastic world, an set of otherworldly melodies laid over some cavernous guitar and primal drums. The vocals multilayer, in elegaic fashion, then get more urgent in response to... something. Everything about this song is great, but it keeps on getting more interesting as it goes and I had to listen a few times before continuing, revelling in it but also a little worried that the quality wouldn't continue.

Fortunately it does. Next up are the two singles that preceded the album, Her Gün Biraz Daha and Endless Suffer. I prefer the former, which is almost trancelike for a while, deep and rhythmic, with an achingly slow vibe, even when a soft speaking voice narrates for a while. If you don't connect to the vibe, you won't like the song, but I did and I did. The latter has a neatly ominous beginning, an effortlessly patient bass setting the scene. A quiet guitar takes over and teases us until it all kicks in at once, again around that two minute mark but escalating this time into something gothic and dark and enticing.

Neither of those singles can match Dreams without Hope, nor can anything else here, but they're good songs and they show that Rivers of Sorrow has real promise. This album may be inconsistent, especially with a nine and a half minute piano nocturne to wrap things up, but there's good stuff on offer and one absolute peach in Dreams without Hope. And I'm going back to listen to that one again right now, while sending the best of luck to whoever's behind the Rivers of Sorrow name. I'd be interested in checking out album number two.

Furtherial - Liberation Path (2021)

Country: Turkey
Style: Melodic Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 1 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

I've been enjoying the diversity of Turkish music here at Apocalypse Later, with bands like Forgotten, Uluru and Metalium alike only in nationality and quality, given that they play doom/death metal, a hybrid of psychedelic/space rock and thrash metal respectively. Here's another style played with some real panache, melodic death metal, courtesy of Istanbul's Furtherial, though there are other elements here too, most overtly progressive metal but also some thrash and power metal. Liberation is their third studio album, though they also put out a two part EP in 2017 and 2018 that could easily count as another.

Including a few years as Extinction, they've been around since 2007 and they've only had a single line-up change in that entire time, Önder Işkın replacing Ozan Murat Özfen on bass in 2014. They're just as tight as that history suggests, which is essential because songs with as much staccato riffing as Dusk Above and Back to the Ocean kind of require it. Had they been less tight, this wouldn't remotely have worked. That it does speaks volumes.

I liked the opener, Tailor of Dreams, which boasts a neat intro, but it was Dusk Above that sold me on the band. Lethean follows it and may be even better. These songs are technical and complex, but they have a bounce to them that's infectious. Başer Çelebi's voice even ventures into power metal for the chorus. Estranged is bouncier still and its insanely simple three note rising riff reminded me a lot of Toranaga. They slayed live and I'd love to see if Furtherial do too.

I'm not quite as sold on the slower, deeper section, because it feels like Furtherial always want to keep the pedal down unless they're getting soft and introspective. Going for a doomy vibe doesn't work as well, but it's capably performed and Çelebi's vocal tone stays as rich as the guitars, just a tad deeper. He covers a lot more ground on the next song, Clashing Stories, including a section where he shifts to a clean voice. He does that particularly well midway through The Old Man too, so it's fair to say that he certainly doesn't feel married to one particular style and that's always promising.

Surely the best thing about this album is that the standard never drops across eight tracks and forty minutes of music, even if my favourite tracks tend to be early ones. The eight and a half minute song, Truth in Existence, doesn't feel longer than anything else, even if the average song here merely runs four or five. There are parts that elevate each song, many of them softer, intricate guitar passages. To prove the exception to every rule, I love the build to a crescendo late in Back to the Ocean, as well as the final thrashy blitz to the finish, which is over too soon.

I should point out that Çelebi isn't just the vocalist in this band, he also contributes a rhythm guitar to back up Bora İnce's lead. They complement each other well, so it rarely seems like one is taking care of the riffs while the other solos. Işkın's bass is perfectly placed in the excellent mix, making it easy to follow, which I always appreciate. Versatile drummer Berkay Yıldırım fills out the line-up but is really the backbone to this band. It was obvious that he was reliable, just listening to a couple of songs, but finishing up the album and especially playing it through again highlights just how much he does.

It's not even a week into the new year, but I think I've found my first 8/10 for 2021 and I think it's fair to say, given the rise of prog rock over the last year, that I wasn't expecting it to be a Turkish melodic death metal album. But hey, discovery is what Apocalypse Later is all about. My highly recommended list for 2021 is now one album long. Let's see how much and how soon it grows!

Metalium - Tenebris (2020)

Country: Turkey
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Feb 2020
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | Twitter | YouTube

I have no idea why the title track of this album is its intro, but it's the calm before the storm, a classy two minute orchestration. Then the band hit it and we're in for half an hour of thrash goodness from Turkey, courtesy of a band who go way back. They formed as far back as 1987, issued their first demo in 1989 and put out a couple of studio albums, apparently on cassette, in 1990 and 1995.

Then they split up, not getting back together for another decade and a half and not releasing any further product until now. The time between their last album, Suffer, and this one is a full quarter of a century. On the basis of this one, I'm happy that they're back, though I would like more information than I can currently find.

It looks like the main man is Mazhar Şiringöz, who has been the vocalist and one of two guitarists from the very beginning. He appears to be an important figure in Turkish metal, not just by leading Metalium but also by being one of the pioneering tape traders in the scene and running a record shop called Saadeth. This sold bootlegs because no western metal was available in Turkey at the time on a commercial basis.

Generally speaking, Metalium play mid-tempo thrash with faster sections when the need arises. The style feels more German than American, though that's in large part due to Şiringöz's vocals, which are delivered with a rough rasp a lot like Mille Petrozza's. I'm also hearing Destruction in the music behind him, though, and that's no bad thing. The instrumentation is clean and pure, the mix helping that a great deal. It doesn't take any effort to hear Yetkin Taşkın's bass, for example, and no one instrument, even the voice, is over-dominating.

While I prefer my thrash on the faster side and songs like Testimony of Doom emphatically refuse to speed up, I enjoyed this a lot. Metalium really have the dual guitar logic down pat, with one racing ahead at pace and the other turning out a neat embellishment over it. That works especially well on the faster sections of Critical Solstice but it's all over the album and so much chugging lends itself to that approach.

Technically, Metalium are really solid. The guitars chug well, speed up well and solo well, but they're ably supported by the drums of Ayhan Ergönül, the other long term member (he played on the band's 1995 album). He doesn't do a lot to draw specific attention to himself, but he's a precision machine and his fills and other enhancements beyond the beat are absolutely seamless. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Metalium rehearse more than most bands.

While I liked this throughout, my favourite song is easily 6th Day of Hell, which wraps up the album, and it's far from a new one. I believe this is a fresh recording of a song that appears all the way back on their 1989 demo. It's the fastest thing here, though it varies pace a lot. It's everything I loved about thrash back in the eighties. I have no idea why it didn't make it onto a studio album until now.

The best riffs, on the other hand, are on a new song, Fallen, the first half of which is destined to get pits moving, so Metalium aren't resting on their laurels here. That and Critical Solstice underline how much this band are as relevant now as they were back in the eighties when metal was underground in Turkey and people like Şiringöz were key players building that scene.

Wrath of Fate - Blood Congress (2019)

Country: Turkey
Style: Death Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 12 Oct 2019
Sites: Instagram | Metal Archives

Wrath of Fate aren't the most innovative death metal band on the planet but then they're not trying to be. They are, however, trying to do a little more than just downtune and let rip. I enjoyed this, their debut album, and there are a few points where they show both what they can really do and something of where they come from, which is Bursa, Turkey, on the opposite side of the Sea of Marmara from Istanbul.

I know very little else about them, as they don't seem to have a website or a Facebook page, but I found the line-up on their Instagram feed. I presume it's been consistent, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, with Ender Sarıkaya behind the mike, Emir Kahraman and Mithatcan Albayrak on twin guitars, Ahmet Çetin on bass and Kaan Menekse on drums.

They get down to business quickly with the title track setting the stage in appropriate fashion for the rest of the album. Wrath of Fate play chugging death with the usual harsh vocals (delivered in the English language) and a technical edge that's led by the twin melodic guitars. The band is able to play at speed but they're mostly content at a mid-pace, with reliable drums from Menekse keeping the tempo. What surprised me most from the outset was that Çetin's bass is often clearly audible, something that I rarely hear in death metal where it tends to be buried in the mix.

If it was the jangling intro to Blood Congress that sparked my interest in a Turkish death metal album, it's how the intro is reprised at the end of the song that kept me on board. The song's not bad at all, but it's elevated by the bookends, especially that throbbing bass towards the end. Then it rolls right into Broken Bones with a melody that feels ethnic and familiar, though I can't place it right now.

There isn't much of an ethnic side here, but it does show up and the band do play well with contrasts. While the riffs are good throughout, I really dug the quiet intros that decorate many of these tracks, like No Mercy and Oath, their melancholy occasionally seeping into the songs that follow, especially on Oath, though it's perky as often as it's melancholy. There are some doom moments on Psychopolitic that impressed me and there's a neat midsection in Uncensored too, but these two guitars are more often cheerful in nature, even if the vocals remain dark, as they tend to be.

And it's those vocals that prove the weakest aspect for me. Sarıkaya doesn't do anything wrong here and he's able to bring at least some intonation into proceedings, but he's hamstrung by the style in which he's singing. It's OK for him to be dark when the music is dark, but when the guitars perk up, he just can't follow them. He's stuck in a single tone and that really doesn't help a band that's trying to mix it up a little.

I'm not sure what the solution is. I think maybe that, if Sarıkaya is happy to stay with his one tone, another band member should step up to add vocals in a different style when needed. That could add the extra dimension that I think Wrath of Fate need to sit on top of the solid foundation that they've built here.

Onur Hunuma - Lumina (2019)

Country: Turkey
Style: Symphonic Power Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 10 May 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I've been enjoying quite a few releases from Turkey of late and I wondered what symphonic power metal would sound like with a Turkish angle, especially when created and performed by one man. This is Onur Hunuma's third full length album in four years and he's knocked out an EP and a bunch of singles in between.

Well, it sounds like the first couple of tracks, both of which are entirely instrumental. Shiva Shakti is an enticing minute long intro that develops out of what sounds like an Istanbul street scene. Valo & Kuolema doesn't but it still creates a visual space. Guitars give way to exotic synthwork, which in turn gives way to guitars. The riffs are simple but solid and the synths get more and more layered. It grows well.

Dreams I Have Seen does some of the same but it's more urgent, darker and more about solos than riffs. It gets much more interesting towards the end too, with what sounds like a brass section but is probably more synths. It escalates with layer after layer being added onto a crushing guitar. I hope Hunuma made it out of that dream alive. I'm sure there are stories to tell. It does end triumphantly, as if escape was its own reward.

And so we go. Well, no we don't, because Hunuma likes to keep things varied. Mostly that's by approach, because songs like Virtual Paradise and Blood Red Hiroshima aren't miles away from these early tracks even if they sound like it on the first listen. The former is a quieter, more background song that reminds of routine eighties soft rock on either side of heavier soloing, a synthpop drum sound defining it, while the latter is more aggressive and a lot more serious, speeding things up to tempos we might expect from extreme metal. They're opposite ends of the same scale.

What's most out of place is Aquatic and not merely because it adds vocals, which are sung in English, for the only time on the album (sans a few samples). It begins softly and never toughens up, content to stay in alternative rock territory with a sixties psychedelic flavour. I can't say that it's a bad song because it isn't, but it would fit better on a Donovan single than on an otherwise instrumental album of Turkish power metal.

I should add that 'symphonic power metal' is a limiting label for Hunuma, even if it's partially accurate. I felt that this was prog metal as much as power metal and it's not always symphonic either. Even on the final track, an orchestral version of The Origin, it brings in an overtly chiptune sound at one point that shifts our take on it from movie score to game soundtrack. The earlier version features samples and a melody that's oddly reminiscent of the James Bond Theme. The latter is there on the orchestral version too but it's more obliterated by the chiptune.

I've enjoyed a lot of one man projects this year and this is another good one. I appreciated Onur Hunuma's variety as much as his compositional skill and musical ability. It's an easy album to listen to but there are depths here that are worth exploring.

Forgotten - Of Past and Passion (2019)

Country: Turkey
Style: Doom/Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 5 Apr 2019
Sites: Facebook | Metal Archives | YouTube

After finding a speed or thrash album that just cleans me out spiritually and emotionally, I like to settle down with some good doom/death, not least because it feels even slower in comparison. After the blitzkrieg of Seax, I found that Forgotten really did the trick, this Turkish band finding a neat vibe over five songs of wildly inconsistent length, as introspective as its evocative cover art.

Apparently, they've been around since 1995, founded in Ankara by guitarist Tolga Otabatmaz. However, they broke up for nine years after only recording a couple of demos. Eventually, they got back together and put out an album, 13 Martyrs, in 2012. I'll be seeking that out, having thoroughly enjoyed a chillout to this long overdue follow-up.

Forgotten have three modes and the opening title track, almost nine minutes of it, demonstrates them all wonderfully.

Firstly, there's a quiet one featuring sparse guitars, patient drums and storytelling vocals. I say guitars (plural) because there are two of them. In isolation, I might suggest that Reha Kuldaşlı and Tolga Otabatmaz are just noodling, but their noodlings weave together very well so clearly they have a very good plan. I'm not sure how people can look inward together but it works for them.

Then there's a noisier mode, in which Serdar Güzelişler's drums get a good deal more emphatic, those guitars ramp up a few notches in power and Harun Altun's vocals follow suit, though not quite so much as we might expect. He has little intention of screaming or shouting at this point, but he does intensify his delivery.

Finally, there's full on doom/death, in which everyone ramps up the power and we feel the chug and the Paradise Lost guitars. Rather strangely, given that Altun introduces this section of the title track with a death grunt, he doesn't contribute much and lets the band behind him deliver the heaviness instead.

After a nearly nine minute track, we get a six minute one, Blue Rain, that does a similar job on a much less epic scale, and then one that runs less than three minutes, because it's an interlude, mostly on piano with some added atmosphere. I'm not sure how viable an interlude is on an album that only just exceeds half an hour, but I like Remnants of a Faint Memory.

Maybe it's there to settle us down for the longest track on offer, eleven minutes plus of The Serpent Once You Were, which to me is a real highlight. A heartbeat leads us in to an agreeable crunch and we're back in the early nineties with My Dying Bride. Altun is at his most evocative here and those twin guitars are achingly slow and full of melancholy melody. I appreciated how the bass let them set the mood and then joined in to deepen it.

While the title track has its peaks and troughs, as Forgotten switch from quiet to noisier mode and back again, before eventually launching into full on doom/death, The Serpent Once You Were starts higher and dips lower for a more emotional journey. It ends in whispers, which works really well for me as the backing music fades away. I have to say that this could easily have crossed the line into pretentious territory, especially with the flatlining heart beat to emphasise it, but it doesn't. It does its job well.

And, with the four minute instrumental called Lethargic to ironically spark things back up as the album wraps, we look back on a doom/death album that's dominated by its twin quiet guitars rather than its vocals or orchestration. Frankly, it's exactly what I was looking for today after the heady rush of Seax, but it's unusual enough to remark on. This is a very folky doom/death album, just as slow as you'd expect but in a quieter and more instrumental fashion. That's cool.

Uluru - Acrophilia (2019)

Country: Turkey
Style: Psychedelic Rock
Rating: 9/10
Release Date: 7 Jan 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook

If acrophobia is the fear of high places, then acrophilia must be, well, an addiction to getting high. That's, erm, highly appropriate for this album, which is as strange a trip as Kadir Kayserilioğlu's gorgeous cover art might suggest. Uluru call what they do psychedelic rock and that works as well for a description as anything else, but this is a stoner metal jam that veers more and more into space rock as the album runs on. You could throw a lot of labels at it, but none of them would affect its quality. This is hypnotically immersive stuff.

I've been listening to Acrophilia a heck of a lot lately, whether in the background while I'm working or in the foreground late at night in the dark with headphones on, and it remains as fresh as ever. It's my first 9/10 review and it was hard to write because I kept getting lost in the music without putting virtual pen to virtual paper to talk about it.

It begins as it means to go on, with the bass of Oğulcan Ertürk and the drums of Ümit Büyükyüksel finding a neatly heavy groove and driving it forward, like a brontosaurus army. Then the guitar of Ege Çaldemir starts to swirl and wail and suddenly we're in a giant whirlpool that keeps on sucking us and those dinosaurs ever inwards. It's vivid and vibrant and tactile and all encompassing and I dug it a lot.

While Uluru is the Aboriginal name for the Australian rock formation often known as Ayers Rock, the band hail from the culturally diverse city of İstanbul in Turkey. Şark is where that enters overtly into their music, adding some ethnic flavour to the mix. Çaldemir's guitar plans on taking us to a lot of places, but initially they're all earthbound. I'm not sure where all of them are but I'm happy to visit, camp out and just bury myself in their environments.

Constantine slows things down a little but gets even heavier in the process. It's at this point that I really acknowledged that Çaldemir was adding synths to the mix as well as guitar. It's sometimes hard to distinguish between them, especially early on, but as the album moves off the surface of this planet to who knows where, the synths add another glorious element to this sound.

Acrophilia Jam is such a wild dance that it's difficult to believe that only three musicians are creating it. For a couple of minutes, we wonder if there are two bands duelling in an echo chamber, but repeat listens clear that up without reducing its admirable complexity. It's one band duelling with itself and winning but not wanting to stop.

While these aren't the longest tracks in the world (some folk have compared them to Earthless, who create twenty minute epics, and it could well be that Uluru took their name from Earthless's fourteen minute Uluru Rock), there's a feeling of eternity in each of them. When I mentioned getting lost in the album, I didn't just mean that I enjoyed it too much to want to stop, I also mean that there's no sense of time when listening to it. Insidious Queen might be 3:51 in length but it feels like I spend a happy month inside it every time I listen before it rolls over again to Şark.

The album gradually moves towards space rock and its closer, Aeternum, is the pinnacle of that. Never mind a whirlpool, this feels like a swirling trip through hyperspace. The synths battle the guitar for much of the song, which ends up feeling rather like an extended Hawkwind solo bathed in swirling light. It's a spiritual experience that's worthy of the ancient name of Uluru.

With a special shoutout for the slowdown a minute and a half into Sin 'n' Shamash, which is seven shades of exquisite, I'll just recommend this incredibly highly. It's the best album I've heard since starting this journey at Apocalypse Later and the one I'm returning to the most. It's also the first contender for album of the year and I look forward to finding something else that's worthy of challenging it for that title.

And, while we wait, Uluru also have a couple of other releases out: 2015's Dazed Hill EP and 2016's Imaginary Sun. They'll keep me busy for a while!