last wednesday, i was with a friend at another concert in the z-7. according to orphaned land‘s singer kobi farhi, this concert was part of the first (european?) oriental metal tour ever. the tour features four bands: the french hardcore/punk/metal band artweg, the tunesian progressive metal band myrath, the algerian/french melodic death metal band arkan as well as the israelian progressive death metal band orphaned land.
the opening band, artweg, wasn’t my personal favorite, mostly because i’m not that much into hardcore. nonetheless, they delivered a very good stage show. the second band was myrath from tunesia (according to encyclopaedia metallum, the first tunesian (metal?) band to be signed on a label). they are playing very progressive metal, and influences from bands like symphony x and dream theater are very audible, but also their oriental influences. this band is really fantastic, and made me buy their two albums which were available on the merch stand ;-) after myrath, arkan entered the stage. during the first song, there were only screamed male vocals, which i didn’t liked too much, but as soon as their female singer entered the stage and the vocal quality increased a lot :-) from that point on, i really enjoyed their music. i ended up buying one of their albums as well… finally, orphaned land entered the stage. i’ve been waiting for some years to finally see them live, and i have to say that it was totally worth it. (no need to buy albums here, since i already have them all ;-) )
one thing i felt really bad about was that the concert was very poorly attended. there were maybe little over 50 attendees, in a hall which fits many hundreds. this was really a shame, as the concert was – at least for me – probably the best one this year. i really hope the bands are more lucky at their other gigs!

the eighteenth video is norra el norra by orphaned land. it’s sung in hebrew. the lyrics can be found here, together with an english translation.

this is progressive oriental metal, and mostly accoustic. you can give it a try.

i like it because… it’s a beautiful song, mostly accoustic, but partly also very heavy. the video has a strange story, but is well-done and i like to watch it.
there’s another very good video of orphaned land, namely sapari, which i embeded almost eleven months ago (which also doesn’t work anymore as an embedded video… this is really annoying!). i like sapari even more than this one, but then, i didn’t want to repeat myself :)
it’s really a pitty that orphaned land’s north america tour came nowhere close to calgary (the closest place in canada was vancouver, almost 1000 km away…), and that their europe tour is this month, i.e. before i’ll be back to europe. i really want to see them live once…