Orphaned Land – The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR

• Country: Israel
• Style: Progressive metal / Folk metal
• Label: Century Media Records
• Release date: 25 January 2010

The album opens with a voice that sounds centuries old, and in a way it is. “Sapari” sets a seventeenth-century poem by the Yemenite Jewish poet Sa’adia ben Amram, a dialogue between a man and his own soul, and Orphaned Land turn it into a strange, swaying dance. It is the right doorway into a record about searching inward.

The album plays like one long journey from darkness towards something like grace. Kobi Farhi’s voice moves between languages, Arabic among them, and between clean chant and death growl. Middle Eastern strings sit next to the distortion without anyone apologising. Steven Wilson mixed the album and added keyboards, and you can hear his patience in the long builds of “The Path” and “New Jerusalem”.

It is a lot to take in at once, and a couple of the shorter interludes feel like scaffolding. But few records from 2010 sound so lit from within.

Best tracks:

Sapari
From Broken Vessels
Disciples of the Sacred Oath II
New Jerusalem

Author’s rating: 8.7/10