Wednesday, September 25, 2013

ORPHANED LAND: "All Is One"

Rating: RRR
Label: Century Media
Review by Martien Koolen

The Israelian rock/metal band Orphaned Land have been in the music business for 22 years already and most of their albums are concept albums, but with this new release "All Is One" they have thrown the concept cd out of the window and composed eleven reasonably accessible songs; dealing with the Israel- Palestina situation. Of course there are also more "difficult" tracks, like e.g. the opener/title song which is very bombastic and "Shama'im", in Hebrew, and "Ya Benaye", which is in Arabic are also not that easy to listen to.

All the songs feature mid tempo Middle Eastern influenced hard rock elements and there are also two big ballads on this album. But for pure metal heads Orphaned Land also delivers with songs like "Fall" and "Your Own Messiah", but be warned because in "Fall" you can also "enjoy" gruntvocals.

"Freedom" is an instrumental track and sounds almost like a prog rock song, but the end is again real Orphaned Land as the song has a lovely Middle Eastern outro.
Highlights for me are "The Simple Man", "Brother" (ballad), and "Shama'im", so if you like something different in metal music then Orphaned Land might be the right choice for you.
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