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Amaseffer: Slaves for life

18/03/10  ||  Euthanatos

Mats fucking Leven. Love the man, love him, love him, would gladly suck his dick. Mats has an amazing voice, and I’ve even suffered through At Vance albums just to listen to him. I’m a big fan of his work on Therion, Krux and Abstrakt Algebra, which is where I listened to him in the first place. Not only does Mats have one of the best voices in metal, he wears a Han Solo shirt in the “Celebrators of Becoming” Therion DVD. You can’t ask for much more. And he’s devilishly handsome to boot. I’m serious, just look at the man. If that isn’t as close as you’re going to get to Johnny Captain Sparrow Depp, then I don’t know, man, I just don’t know.

So I was reading something or other about Mats Leven and he mentioned this Amaseffer gig he was doing after he left Therion, and I got my panties all wet and shit because Mats is the man and I wouldn’t have to wait to listen to his dreamy voice. Luckily for me, Amaseffer had already released their debut, and it’s pretty darn good! The perfect definition for “Slaves for Life” is epic. It’s nothing more, nothing less than an epic soundtrack to an unmade movie, or book, or play, or what have you, but something of a grand scope, with a middle-eastern flavor and daring songwriting.

The first thing it reminded me of was Orphaned Land and their latest (and to me, magnum opus fucking masterpiece) record, “The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR”. While Orphaned Land is more (death) metal and diverse, benefiting from more varied vocals and the killer production work of genius Steven Wilson, Amaseffer is more progressive oriented, and features a lot of orchestral passages that go hand in hand with Mats’ suffered vocal passages.

The album is a concept piece with a lot of spoken passages in hebrew which are actually done by the drummer, and the rest of the metal vocals that Mats doesn’t handle is done by Orphaned Land’s Kobi Farhi. The story concerns the plight of the Jewish people in Egypt and the coming of Moses and how he delivered them. Basically a more metal soundtrack to “The Ten Commandments”. Any way this would be cooler is if Charlton Heston’s rotting corpse came in to record some narrations. And shoot some shit too, because that would be badass. Back to the topic of special guests, Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow also growls here and there on the track “Midian”, which is one of the most interesting moments in “Slaves For Life”.

So, this is the product you’d get if you crossed Therion and Orphaned Land, no two ways about it. I’d like it more if they had inserted some real orchestration and more choirs instead of keyboard synths, but you can’t have it all (although, if they are Jewish, they should be loaded, right?).

Amaseffer promise this is only the first in a trilogy, so more good things are to come. If you’re looking for some refreshing music, quite different from what’s out there today, you might want to check this out.

The cover: The jews being whipped to shit, working their asses off in the scorching heat of the desert. That Pharaoh was a cunt.

8

  • Information
  • Released: 2008
  • Label: InsideOut Music
  • Website: www.amaseffer.com
  • Band
  • Yuval Kramer: guitars
  • Hanan Avramovich: guitars
  • Erez Yohanan: drums, percussion
  • Mats Leven: vocals
  • Angela Gossow: vocals on “Midian”
  • Kobi Farhi: vocals
  • Maya Avraham: vocals on “Zipporah”
  • Yotam “Defiler” Avni: vocals on “Midian”
  • Amir Gvirtzman: flutes
  • Yatziv Caspi: tablas on “Slaves for Life” and “Midian”
  • Yair Yona: “Zipporah” and “Burning Bush”
  • Tracklist
  • 01. Sorrow
  • 02. Slaves for Life
  • 03. Birth of Deliverance
  • 04. Midian
  • 05. Zipporah
  • 06. Burning Bush
  • 07. The Wooden Staff
  • 08. Return to Egypt
  • 09. Ten Plagues
  • 10. Land of the Dead

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