The Turkish Yaşru, active for about five years, offer us their excellent second album entitled Öz. After the Nordic folk metal, the Celtic one and the one from the western Mediterranean, here comes this intriguing variant that, like the nation from which it comes, in the end reveals itself as a melting pot of influences between the European sounds and those more traditionally oriental. The band, in fact, is led by the experienced Istanbul musician Berk Öner, who takes care with great skill both of the vocal parts and of almost all the instrumentation, especially the ethnic one, leaving his two companions of adventure to devote themselves only to the rhythmic base. Berk doesn’t have an exceptional voice, but his very evocative timbre turns out to be completely adequate to the proposed genre, as well as the instrumental part is much more oriented towards sounds pertaining to tradition than the proposals that we usually listen to in this area, leaving the metal component on the background. It’s also true, on the other hand, that at the rhythmic level sometimes emerges some doom heritage, (in particular in the magnificent Yağmur) extremely welcome as it is able to further raise the emotional rate of the work. The oriental component never prevails very linear melodies, not so different from those we are accustomed to listen to in our lands and, in this way, Berk manages to bring the listener in unfamiliar territories without, for this, there is the risk of rejecting him by putting him in front of excessively difficult sounds. Öz, in fact, is a slim album, which in less than forty minutes tells a lot about this beautiful country in which coexist opposing realities such as the metropolitan Istanbul and the rural Asia Minor. For those who have never visited Turkey, listening to this work of Yaşru can be an opportunity to embark on a pleasant virtual journey and, specifically, folk is confirmed, among all musical genres, one of the ideal vehicles to sail our imagination.

2014 – Independent