### Orphaned Land: The never ending way of ORwarriOR

#### 15/03/10 || Altmer

In the land of Jesus, people kill each other. Palestinians, Israelites, taught to wield a gun. Apparently this band is from Israel, and they have both Arab and Jew members in the band; they are apparently some sort of uniting force, and their albums concern the history of The Holy Land or whatever. Don’t worry, for they ain’t fucken Stryper, or As I Lay Dying, or some other God-worshiping fag-o band, but a solid unit, multi-faith, multi-talented, and probably filthy rich, because they hired Steven Wilson (you know “Blackwater Park”? He produced that gem) to mix this stuff. Normally, that means I would drool over this shit: progressive death metal with oriental influences, produced by a guy that has been one of my musical heroes for quite a while, plus an interesting lyrical take – you’d expect me to fall for this like staffer Smalley for any woman. But for some reason, I don’t, the exact reason why being that this is also prog metal, and it comes with the requisite noodling. And those noodles are tangled like badly stirred spaghetti.

And this is a problem, because the album is a stunning 78 (!) minutes long. It suffers from “too much” syndrome. What I mean is that they literally tried to cram everything into this album. Heavy, crunchy riffs, growls, female vocals, male vocals, acoustic interludes, proggy noodling, time changes, everything is on it, but all in all, it’s very chaotic, as the song structures meander from riff to riff but never settle in a groove. And as we all know, Altmer gotsta groove – he can take a bit of wank, but he needs the songs, and although stuff like opener “Sapari” has such stuff that dreams are made of (but not, with the hideously boring time changes), most of this is boring. It ain’t even bad because it sounds good, it’s played properly, and parts of it remind me of Opeth (listen to “The path part 1” for a good example), which bring a warm smile to my face.

The album is as pretentious as Opeth is though (probably even more). It is subdivided into three parts (of which I don’t get the titles), lyrics are sung in Hebrew, English and Arabic amongst others, but this subdivision, possibly related to concept (narration appears throughout), doesn’t do anything to enhance the content of the material because nobody gets what these guys sing about anyhow. Some of the vocals are folky style choir vocals, which may turn off the listener that isn’t into that type of stuff, but thankfully they aren’t on every song, and more like loose little tidbitties serving as intros or outros, or in the occasional song, they are a female-vocal chorus (such as “Sapari”).

Everything is executed neatly, from the excellent growls, to the Åkerfeldt-esque clean vocals, to the beautiful female vocals, and the band never seems off. It’s even got a kind of grower quality about it – the dense, layered nature of the album makes you feel like there’s something more to it. There is, too – more listens reveal nice little details that you would otherwise miss, but in the grand scheme, they don’t add to the songs, which still makes the album a chore to sit through at its expansive running time. It’s just that I had very high hopes for this album, considering it took the band six years to make it – and I feel slightly let down, because it’s all right in most cases, it just never sticks with me and that is a letdown. Don’t be fooled though – do not dismiss it after one playthrough, as this is one of those albums that takes a few spins to wrap your mind around it.

All-in-all, this Israeli band may well be a peace force in their native country, they are definitely a talented bunch, as is made obvious by past albums, but this is not the album to get by them. If you really wanna check these guys out, do “Mabool”, not this one. It’s all-right in the long term, much like your favourite football team does all right in the long run, but it’s not as spectacular as I expected it to be, and I wanted it to be fantastic. Also I salute the band for uniting Jews and Muslims in Israel, something politics still fails to do there. So at least they have that going for them.

And they probably eat more hoummous than I do, which is always a reason to hate anybody. Hoummous is the stuff of gods. And they have falafel too. Now I’m envious.

- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Century Media
- Website: www.orphaned-land.com
- Band
- Kobi Farhi: leading chants, growls, narrations, choir & backing vocals
- Uri Zelha: electric & acoustic bass
- Yossi Sassi Sa’aron: electric & classic guitars, saz, bouzouki, chumbush, choir vocals & piano
- Matti Svatitzki: rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
- Matan Shmuely: drums
- some unnamed carrier of breasts: female vocals

- Tracklist
- 01. Sapari
- 02. From Broken Vessels
- 03. Bereft In The Abyss
- 04. The Path Part 1 – Treading Through Darkness
- 05. The Path Part 2 – The Pilgrimage To Or Shalem
- 06. Olat Ha’tamid
- 07. The Warrior
- 08. His Leaf Shall Not Wither
- 09. Disciples Of The Sacred Oath II
- 10. New Jerusalem
- 11. Vayehi Or
- 12. M I ?
- 13. Barakah
- 14. Codeword: Uprising
- 15. In Thy Never Ending Way (Epilogue)