Bilinçten Derine

Over the last few years some great Turkish death metal has popped up, like Decaying Purity, Nettlethrone and Carnophage, and let’s not forget to mention their one and only grindcore act Sakatat. But the rest to me is unknown, besides these few bands I can’t say I know of any others. However I can now add Baht to the list of Turkish metal, and they also fit into the death metal category. But "Bilincten derine" is not a ultra-blasting, brutal-as-hell death metal demo. Nope, quite far from it. This is to the progressive side of the matter, in the vein of Opeth.

It took me quite some listens before I got the hang of Baht’s sound. At first I just thought it was inexpressive and dull, but I’m starting to see what they’re all about. Since Opeth was my initial thought of comparison I expected a much cleaner, misanthropic sound, where as this is leaning more to a heavy, doom-esque thingie. Most of the material is set at a slow pace, having the drums set a rhythm of trance-inducing nodding along. The riffs carry a very heavy feel, at times reminiscing of thrash, sometimes even heavy metal, while still standing strongly within the death metal genre. There are a lot of tempo changes, different drum patterns, unorthodox instrumentation, leaving it very diverse. Take for instance the title track, which abruptly bursts into blasting, only to settle down, leading you into a melodic passage of undistorted guitars, carrying on with some clean vocals, continuing into more heavy, yet melodic, doom-ridden death metal.

Halfway through the record you get the instrumental folk music track "Alaca", which is a nice break from the otherwise harsh growls, heavy distortion and pounding drums. Baht have some interesting touches, but it’s still nothing more than a demo. But I do however think that this is a nice showcase of what will come next, as I’m convinced they’d be able to produce a great album of progressive metal. So it’ll be interesting to see what they’ll come up with next.

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