SAHARA

Orphaned Land’s music is a mix between death metal and Arabic folklore. The idea itself is quite unique and original too. There’re probably lots of Folk Metal bands already out there, but you won’t find this kind of mixture quite often. Basically, Orphaned Land is a death Metal band, but they’re influenced with Arabic folk and Jewish tradition that make them unique, as well as progressive. This debut album is probably not their best, but it’s already showed a good start.

Into the tracks:

The opening track ‘The Sahara’s Storm’ start with guitar solo with some folk atmosphere in the background provided by some percussions. Then the drum beat kicks off and the vocal enter the song and followed by some nice keyboard works. You can feel a quite good combination of metal and folk by the band here. ‘Blessed be Thy Hate’ started with some guitar riffs and medium tempo. This track has some tempo shifting and quite nice melody and solos in some parts.

‘Ornaments of Gold’ is a heavy track. This track sounds more like just a death metal song, there’s only a little of folk influences here. There’s a nice keyboard works near the end. ‘Aldiar Al Mukadisa - The Holy Land of Israel’ gives you quite strong traditional feelings. Starts with some singing and then followed by some sort of speaking and nice acoustic Arabic folk melody. The next track, ‘Seasons Unite’ starts with some heavy riffs and some bass lines. This track also has stronger metal elements here.

‘The Beloved’s Cry’ is a quite nice acoustic track. It starts with some guitar tunes, followed by a male vocal and then some female vocal too. ‘My Requiem’ is a rather slow track with heavy riffs and some quite good guitar solos. The tempo becomes faster in the middle for a while, and then slowed down a bit. The album closed with ‘Orphaned Land - The Storm Still Rages Inside...’ This track has some good and quite cool guitar solos, and some nice acoustic part with traditional feelings in the middle towards the end.

Overall, I think this album isn’t a bad effort. There isn’t a really great track though. Most of them are mediocre tracks, with some good parts in it. Personally I don’t really like this album. I consider that’s because I’m never really into death metal myself. Apart from the sound quality, my biggest problem here is the vocals though. I don’t really mind the growling, except in some parts. The clean vocals however, sound just plain and a bit irritating lots of the times. The album was not well produced too, IMO. The sound quality isn’t really good. Nevertheless, I’ll give this album 5 out of 10, two and a half stars.

This album has stronger metal elements than folklores, so maybe this album would appeal better to death metal fans.