•
Rating: It is from the arid Israeli lands that one of those bands, said by many insiders to be one of the best in the metal scene, came to life in 1991: Orphaned Land.
The group, formed by Kobi Farhi on vocals, Matti Svatitzki and Yossi Sassi on guitars, Sami Bachar on drums, and Uri Zelcha on bass, decided to take their first steps in the Israeli musical underground, offering music that may not be to everyone's taste, but certainly manages to get noticed for being particularly original and fresh, even though it doesn't present anything genuinely new: the genre proposed by the combo can be broadly defined as death doom metal (I'm naturally speaking about the band's origins, not today), with various influences coming from both progressive and, more significantly, Jewish folk music.
The first album that emerges from this musical blend is the extremely rare "The Beloved's Cry," a demo dating back to 1993, produced, distributed, and recorded by the band members themselves, who brought to life six songs, ranging from four and a half minutes to just under nine minutes. Starting with "Season Unite", moving on to "Above You All", through the central trio of "Pits Of Despair", "The Beloved's Cry", and "My Requiem", ending with the final "Orphaned Land - The Storm Still Rages Inside...", it is evident how these five musicians, while showing a certain aggressiveness in each of the six compositions, highlighted especially by Farhi's deep growl and square, powerful guitar riffs, are also very careful not to betray their cultural roots, inserting within each track various elements clearly derived from Israeli folk music, using typical instruments from the tradition of their land and more generally of Arabic music. Alongside these two strong influences, there is also the clear desire of the band to showcase first-rate technical abilities, creating extremely refined and complex melodies that rest on ever-evolving tempos.
The work of each member is commendable, but from a technical standpoint, the bass stands out in the album, finding its space both in the rhythmic and melodic sections, delivering solos of great technical complexity, demonstrating not only preparation backed by years and years of study but also a truly advanced composing taste, common anyway to the rest of the group as well.
Despite the album being, as mentioned before, completely self-produced, we are faced with a work that is quite well-recorded, presenting negligible flaws that don't undermine its listening pleasure.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Seasons Unite (08:23)
The rain falls, the snow storms
The gods unleash their wrath
The summer comes, sunlight swarms
Fairies of magic laugh
The green of leaves forsakes now
Before to be exchanged with gray
Before the king of winter bow
And begin your wish to say
As autumn falls upon us
And we wait for a sign
Waiting for the cold to pass
Absorb it if we can
To warmth I lust
The swan song of a man
For all you believers
This darkness I make mine
The freeze sends its shivers
Up and down my spine
Seasons unite, shining above my eyes
The heat soon brings desire
Burning my veins like fire
The truth is actually a lie
I watch myself burning higher
Flesh to flesh we bind
Yours is winter and summer is mine
Could this be the end of the line
Or a beginning (that shall) eternally shine
02 Above You All (04:56)
I stand above you now
Slowly taking your soul
The god of gods, the corruptor
I stand above you all
Hear my never-ending lie
Ride the wind
Control your life
Bringing swiftly
The lord demise
I fight against all fire
I will never tire
I am above all lords
I am the god of gods
Your shell is empty
It will not take a long for you to fall
Seventh is the sacred number
I've now awoken from years of slumber
03 Pits of Despair (04:26)
Traveling the world
To cure my disease
For years I'm traveling
The seven seas
The blackened
And bleeding sky
They tare off my close demise
The pain it paled me
To the pits of despair
Helpless I'll be
My own heart I tear
My true self spilled out
Death is close no doubt
Forbidden it is for man to kill a man
Because of it I'm god dammed
04 The Beloved's Cry (04:43)
My heart flies on her wings
Now I'm crying, the moon so red
Tomorrow shall be yet another hell
To the sun, (the) sky's soul is fed
Blows pass me
(I'm) down them I do not feel
Anything except the shadow is real
Why did she do it ? Why did she die ?
How could she leave without saying goodbye ?
She has proven my life to be just a lie
When sea waves crush they hit me hard
But I do not feel them
And then reality is no more real to me
I ask myself, should I end it now
And join her at last ?
I miss the cold embrace of lust
There's nothing left, just a dust
Nothing is left from my dearest love
05 My Requiem (08:08)
From the arising of the golden sun
To the gloomy shadow of the moon
The wind still whispers
While I'm standing here by myself
I'm waiting for a sign that could lead me
Away to the land of the divine
But when weariness starts to affect,
The eclipse of the sun came to earth
I hide from the sun and try to live
And I know deep in my heart
(That) this is a life that God cannot give
I still carry in my mind
The feeling that I'm blind
I still carry in my mind
The fear that something is behind
Tear, left bare
Rule the whole earth
The dark will rise
I await its birth - To die
I see gray in the sky
And pray for rain
But the sky slowly becomes blue once again
The spirit of God controles my mind
The divine - The unearthly Lord
He left me a sign - He made me a God
I lie in eternal coldness
I'm trying to find
The thing I couldn't find
Nowhere else in my past life
My spirit sours into heaven
I reincarnate into a cold black raven
Loading comments slowly
