Orphaned Land - The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR

January 18, 2010

Reviewer: Jesse

When the prospect of a new Orphaned Land album was entertained several years ago, fans of Mabool knew that living up to said album would be a daunting task for the band, but there were still a few givens that we expected and which came true to a certain extent.  It would be a massively-wrought album with a plethora of instruments and would also be just as massive of a concept album with a story bordering on epic.  Both came to fruition on The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR.  

Six years in the making (wow, where does the time go… crowning Mabool as album-of-the-year in ’04 doesn’t seem like six years ago), The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR lives up to certain expectations.  It is a hugely complex album both musically and allegorically that is impossible to grasp even on three or four complete spins.  Divided into three parts (or movements, if you will), the story of ORwarriOR is (roughly) the birth, coming of age and ascent of a heroic figure battling metaphorical darkness.  The songs follow these events in a sort of soundtrack to a theatrical play, ebbing and flowing with the emotional effect from each act.  One minute it’s up-tempo and rocking along to a catchy melody and chorus on “Sapari”, then you’re envisioning an awakening scene with a quiet narrative and a slow-moving orchestra segment on “The Warrior”, where I can see the actor on stage alone with his arms outstretched like feelers, as if he’s blind, bobbing his body up and down to each chug of the cello section while a lone, soft light shining down on him.

Musically, ORwarriOR is about as elaborate as I could have guessed but not as I would have wanted.  It’s an intricate host of vocal styles and instruments that congregate in a progressive body.  The vocals and instruments are not the source of my bemusement; it’s the proverbial long-jump they did into the world of sterile prog metal, where songs meander aimlessly and albums are fragmented by a myriad of filler interludes.  Right from the second track, “From Broken Vessels,” I knew that this album was not going to end well for my ears, but because of the ultra-catchy nature of the opener “Sapari” and the incredible “Disciples of the Sacred Oath II” (both of which were released early on their Myspace page, perhaps because those were the two best songs on the album), I wasn’t going to give up by any means.  After several marathon listens (this album is a hair under eighty minutes) I had to just face the fact that I cannot get into this album at all.  Nothing grabs me and the album seems as if it were put together with the intention of confusing and losing the patience of the listener.  They traded superb song-writing for musical showmanship and a tiresome conceptual script that the music had to follow.  The end result is a bloated and exhausting jaunt into progressive monotony.

That’s not to say that The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR is totally boring or useless.  In fact, there are flashes of that Mabool-brilliance all over the place, but that’s all they are: flashes.  Only on a few instances do they come together to form a cohesive and memorable song.  The short interlude tracks are distracting and needless and if they were totally important to the idea of the album, they should have been somehow incorporated into a full song.

Orphaned Land is a band that is literally bursting at the seams with talent, and their reservoir for creativity should be overflowing.  When they put those two together, we get Mabool.  When the creativity is tapped and only a dash of songwriting talent is thrown in, we get ORwarriOR, because - make no mistake - they really went all-out into this concept, but so much so that I think making lushly memorable songs got put onto the back burner.  I know they can do better than this because I’ve seen it.  Hopefully another six years isn’t awaiting us.

TRACK LISTING

Part I: Godfrey's Cordial –
An ORphan's Life

01.  Sapari
02.  From Broken Vessels
03.  Bereft In The Abyss
04.  The Path Part 1 –
        Treading Through Darkness
05. The Path Part 2 –
       The Pilgrimage To Or Shalem
06.  Olat Ha'tamid

Part II: Lips Acquire stains –
The WarriOR Awakens

07.  The Warrior
08.  His Leaf Shall Not Wither
09.  Disciples Of
        The Sacred Oath II
10.  New Jerusalem
11.  Vayehi Or
12.  M I ?

Part III: Barakah –
Enlightening The Cimmerian

13.  Barakah
14.  Codeword: uprising
15.  In Thy Never Ending Way
       (Epilogue)

Total playing time:  1:18:18

Release Date: January 25th, 2010
Label: Century Media

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