while searching for bands making similar music to the israli progdeath band orphaned land, i recently stumbled across another isreali band named distorted. i would describe their style as very progressive melodic oriental death metal, featuring a female clean voice besides the usual (male) death voice.
when i first stumbled about their homepage and started reading their member profiles, i was stunned: many of them are inspired by and listen to music which i like a lot:
- guy, their bass player, lists for example orphaned land, opeth and porcupine tree as his influences, and his top album of all time is orphaned land’s mabool;
- benny, their guitar player, mentions nevermore as one of his musical influences, and also lists mabool as his top album of all time;
- miri, their (clean voice) singer, lists the gathering, nevermore and opeth in her musical influence list, and mentions nevermore’s ingenious dead heart in a dead world, opeth’s deliverence, the gathering’s mandolyion and nevermore’s dreaming neon black as her top albums of all time;
- raffy, their (death voice) singer and guitarist, names tool, nevermore and opeth as his influences and lists tool’s aenima, nevermore’s enemies of reality and opeth’s deliverance as his top albums of all time.
well, this is a > 100 % increase of people i know who like pretty much the same music than me :-)
after seeing this and listening to one of their tracks (redemption) from their debut album (memorial) which they put online, i decided that i have to order their album. and so i did. it took some time until it arrived, but then, listening to it at a whole, i was pretty much blown away. it is simply great! it combines the oriental influences form orphaned land with the progressive death metal from opeth, adding a female voice (i know some of you will be sceptical about the latter, but i’d say it fits well and i don’t want to miss it). for me, this is one of the best albums (or maybe even, the best?) i’ve heard this year.
