| CD REVIEW Orphaned Land |
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Band : Orphaned Land Do you believe it is possible to live together in peace, no matter what's your religion, no matter what's your country? Do you want to support that message and get it heard by others? Then join Orphaned Land. The lyrical message this album brings is a strong one about creating harmony between conflicts, a musical heaven on earth, a tango between God & Satan. This is a musical journey of hope in lands of war, creating heaven on earth, building a new Jerusalem. Even in the album’s artwork, a symbol of peace, they combine Hebrew and Arabic, regardless of the fight between Jews and Muslims. The music takes the time it needs to get the message across and while there aren't many show-off passages there is a huge amount of detail in the numerous instruments and vocals that will show themselves on repeated listens. As hard as it is to make a justified review of this album I can only imagine the amount of work that went into creating it. It is indeed a full body of work. It combines the best from past works like Mabool and Saharaalbums, while evolving in new fascinating directions. Seemingly boundless with emotion and details the album always remains focused and keeps the listeners full attention for the entire running time of 1 hour and 20 minutes. Instead of just delivering a fifteen songs, there is something more to this album. You really hear that this is a concept album, uniting the different parts with short instrumentals. The songs themselves are mostly very progressively tinged metal pieces, not too epical to be called pompous. Like so many bands today, Orphaned Land started out as a Death Metal band, but growling appears briefly but at the right places For me, the female voice and above all the eastern instruments (oud, bouzouki, saz, percussion) are the leading instruments and the innovative use of these give the songs a special positive touch. Not to forget the excellent guitar work on this album. There's no denying that their music is incredible, and the message in their songs rings true. Cheers to Orphaned Land for another addition to the expanding and conquering world of middle-eastern metal music!. 93/100B Cosmicmasseur.
Band : Orphaned Land I got my introduction to Israel’s Orphaned Land when they released their previous album, 2004’s Mabool…an album which quite simply left me wanting for more. At the time I went completely crazy on the band, devizing an incredibly detailed and long interview questionnaire. The band not only awarded me with extensive answers (according to my directions), but also complemented on the most detailed and in-depth interview they had ever done. Later compliments came when the band’s label made the effort to write us a mail, announcing they had for the first time in their history awarded an interview with a perfect 10/10 rating! Sounds like I’m blowing my own horn here, but really if it wasn’t the band’s music and underlaying ideologies, I would never have been influenced into making all the effort (it took me a complete week to construct that rather complex questionnaire). In other words, both Orphaned Land and Mabool were wórth far more than any little attention which I, in my humble position as music journalist, was able to give them!!! Regretfully, that interview got lost in the big computer crash our website suffered in early 2005, so here’s a short history-of-the-band. Founded as Ressurrection in 1991, the band changed their name a year after, and released their debut album Sahara in 1994. On it, a daring mix of Progressive, Death and Doom Metal, with additional Middle-Eastern influences often enhanced by “local” acoustic instruments...dubbing it “Jewish Muslim Metal” or “Middle Eastern progressive Metal”. Even more daring, is the fact that from their very beginnings OL has “fought” against the fact that, although Christians, Jews, and Muslim are all tribes of Abraham, they keep on fighting each other to the death “in the name of God”. By adding both Hebrew and Arabic lyrics to their songs, the band soon made friends and fans both in Israel and the Arab world (some of which risk oppresion from their countries by bearing OL tattoos). However, in spite of their peace message, OL is still prohibited to bring their music to the fans in certain Arab countries. Second album El Norra Alila surfaced in 1996, and shortly after several members were (in consecutive periods) due to fulfill their military service. In between, they still played the occasional gig, and started working on third album Mabool, which eventually was released after 7 years’ work on it. While working up to the recording process of Mabool, OL had already sent out their first records to Porcupine Tree frontman Steve Wilson, to see whether he would be interested in producing their upcoming album. Apparently Wilson wasn’t very much impressed, but when the band sent him the finished Mabool album, his reaction was indeed véry positive. No surprise, because Mabool is really a darn epic album, and I’m not afraid to say again that its beauty frequently moved me to tears during listening sessions! After working on the new album’s material for about 5 years, the band spent over 600 hours in the studio, time during which they collaborated with The Arabic Orchestra Of Nazareth, and molded many oriental and other traditional instruments (Arabian flutes, saz, santur, middle-eartern percussions, cumbus, bouzouki, several types of guitars, piano…and the keyboards of producer Steve Wilson) into their music. The Never Ending Way Of OrwarriOR is a 75-minute, 3-part conceptual album about this “Warrior Of Light” which most of us have hidden inside ourselves, this personality inside each of us that would like to speak out and react against all the attrocities which our political or religious leaders are perpetrating against our fellow man…in our name. A personality most of us won’t dare to let out in fear of oppressive reaction from our environment, or the religious and/or political society we live in. In essence, it’s an album which speaks openly speaks against the “Wars For God’s Sake”, demonstrating it openly with the press pictures they made for the album (you’ll see Jews, Arabs, and Christians in several positions, all “worshipping” the same God, together in one picture!). Musically, you get what you already got on Mabool: acoustic tracks or passages fit in between more aggressive passages/ songs, each having both a complexity undercurrent ànd overall melodic feel to die for…with vocals which vary from clean to Death growls…and the occasional female vocal contributions of Schlomit Levi in 4 songs, most noted in the wonderful album opening “Sapari” (with Yemenite lyrics, if I ain’t mistaken, but it’s her chanting which really màkes the song, actually), in the acoustic and calmer “His Leaf Shall Not Wither” (in a backing vocal situation, regrettably no chants), and “New Jerusalem” (wherein she alternates lead vocals with Kobi Fahri, ending her passages with chants…Kobi himself ending the song with a fading chant himself) and in the short background chanting intro of “The Path Part 2 – The Pilgrimmage To Or Shalem”. Well, unless you’re into music lessons, the best way to get acquainted with Orphaned Land’s new platter is by listening to the 3 tracks [including the above mentioned “Sapari”, “Disciples Of The Sacred Oath” and “Va’yehi Or” serving as the perfect examples of how the band mixes complex but melodic Death Metal (woven by bassist Uri Zelha and guitarists Matti Svatizky and Yossi Sassi Sa’aron – I’m not sure whether drummer Yatziv Caspi was still part of the line-up at the time of recordings…he sure doesn’t seem to be now, which makes me wonder whom the band will be performning with come February 5…or touring with during their upcoming March tour of America, and their late April - start of May European gigs) with Oriental instruments and passages with clean and choir vocals, something in which Kobi is aided by guitarist Yossi] posted at myspace.com/orphanedland. With several European festivals already on their agenda for early late Spring and Summer, we Belgians will have to wait for August 21, when the band appears at Méan’s Metal Méan Festival IV. Gives us time enough to give the new album enough listening sessions to either sing or chant along with the band’s new songs! At any rate, I’ve found myself my rare perfect (and when I say perfect, I mean pérfect!) rated album for this year!!! Just an afterthought: some politicians get nominated for the Nobel prizes in the “Peace” category, when they haven’t even done anything in favour of World Peace yet except make dire promises which win their elections…why don’t we get off our asses and send out suggestions to nominate the guys of Orphaned Land, who’ve forged friends to the point of having both Muslims singing along in Hebrew and Jews in Arab, coming together not only through the band’s communication network, but also during the band’s homs turf gigs!? Music is indeed a most powerful “Weapon Of Peace”, and if more people would see their way to think the way Orphaned Land fans (among which I count myself!) do, the world would be rid of quite a bit of bigotry and hatred! 100/100 Tony.
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