Band : Orphaned Land
Album Title : The Never Ending Way Of Orwarrior
Label : Century Media Records
Distributor : EMI
Release Date : 25/01/2010
Review : CD

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!.

93/100

Cosmicmasseur.