### Thrown To The Sun: Of oceans and raindrops

#### 03/07/12 || BamaHammer

Thrown to the Sun is a relatively new death metal act hailing from the fledgling Turkish scene, and as far as that Turkish death metal scene is concerned, for what it’s worth, I feel like these guys are the current reigning kings. They’ve put together a brand of truly progressive death metal that’s very original and instantly recognizable, at least to me, and that fact alone makes this a band worthy of some legitimate respect.

The album “Of oceans and raindrops” from 2011 is just this band’s debut, and from the sounds of things, they’re well ahead of schedule. Thrown to the Sun is comprised of Badahir Sarp on guitar, Enver Yilmaz’s vocals, and Onur Altinay on bass (all members of Turkish thrash band The Blame, which is also fucken excellent), as well as guitarist Ahmet Saracoglu and drummer Batuhan Bekmen. All five of these dudes do what they do very well.

In particular, the bass work on this album is some of the coolest, most interesting parts you’ll find in modern proggy death metal. Onur Altinay is one of my absolute favorite bassists in the world right now just simply because of the way he always manages to keep the song interesting regardless of what else is going on. He noodles neat little fills whenever they’re needed and has an uncanny knack for locking into whatever the airtight drums are doing and making rhythms come alive. Really cool stuff.

The guitars on “OOAR” aren’t anything that will blow you away, but they’re really tight and have an excellent clarity courtesy of an absolutely ace production, which is always nice to hear from a self-released album. The riffs always sound enormous and powerful even during the parts with freakishly odd time signatures, and part of that is because of that tasty bass. The guitar solos are always interesting as well, providing nice melodic moments at times and grabbing your attention by sounding completely strange and out of place at other times.

The vocals, courtesy of Enver Yilmaz, are little more raspy and a little less deep than your typical modern death metal growler, and he’s capable of contorting his voice in ways that should be illegal. There’s an almost black metal shriek quality to his work on this album, but he also dabbles in clean sounds, where he bring the System of a Down flavor pretty well, and manages to do this yelling growl thing on occasion where he sounds truly tormented (check out “Inward Reflection” for this awesome weirdness), and for some reason it’s awesome.

Do yourself a favor and go to Thrown to the Sun’s website and download this album and give it a thorough listen. The quality here is beyond worthy of that. It’s twelve excellent tracks with no filler at all. This is a top-notch band with a top-notch album from essentially a death metal backwoods that deserves some serious attention.

- Information
- Released: 2011
- Label: Self-released
- Website: www.throwntothesun.com
- Band
- Batuhan Bekmen: drums
- Ahmet Saracoglu: guitars
- Enver Yilmaz: vocals
- Onur Altinay: bBass
- Bahadir Sarp: guitars

- Tracklist
- 01. Adrift
- 02. Ravenous Sun
- 03. Kaczynski
- 04. Inward Reflection
- 05. Burning Circle
- 06. The Crumbling
- 07. Seized by Obscurity
- 08. Locus of Nullity
- 09. Evoker Pt. 1: A Ground to Fall Upon
- 10. Laceration
- 11. Afterglow
- 12. The Ocean Beneath the Universe