Exodus: Slaves For Life --- Amaseffer --- 2008 (InsideOut Music)
The first thing I notice here is that this band appear to have a major label behind them, which is in stark contrast to the vast majority of bands I have checked out in this section, not only here in Israel, but all across the Middle East (or at least, the tiny portions we've touched on), most of whom are either unsigned or independent. The fact that Amaseffer have major backing should give them an edge over their contemporaries, and yet this appears to be their only album, and seven years old at that. The name of the band seems to translate in Hebrew as “People of the Holy Book”, and the album, as its title implies, looks to be a concept one covering the escape of the Jews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. Of the albums I've reviewed thus far, this seems to be the longest of any of them, clocking in at an impressive seventy-seven minutes.
We open with a narrated piece, not in English (Yiddish? Hebrew? Israeli?) and some flutey Arabic style backing, with a nice sort of clangy guitar as “Sorrow” opens the album, and very sorrowful indeed it is. Theres's a real sense of melancholy and loss in the music, which is mostly, almost entirely instrumental, bar the introductory few words. With the sounds of chains rattling, horses neighing and stone on stone, we move into the title track, with a dark, rising, grumbling guitar and a lament being sung again in a Middle Eastern language as the sound effects increase. I'm assuming this is meant to represent the Jews being sold into slavery.
The first proper guitar chords now merge with flute to produce a very Arabian melody as the song starts to take shape. Now I'm rather delighted to hear that the vocals are in English, and so I can follow this epic story instead of just wondering what the band are singing (or sometimes talking) about. My one problem is that nobody is actually credited as band vocalist --- some are shown as “narrator”, some as “actor” --- and they also use guest singers such as Angela Gossow from Arch Enemy, Mats Levin from Therion and Orphaned Land's talented singer, Kobi Fahri, so I have no idea who is singing at any one time. Be that as it may, this song seems to relate the story of Moses and his eventual breaking away from his Egyptian family in order to lead the Jews out of Egypt and to the Promised Land. It's pretty much progressive or symphonic metal for the most part with, as with Orphaned Land, many traditional instruments used, including oud, saz, tablas and bouzouki.
With breathtaking cinematic splendour and dramatic sweep, the song runs for over nine minutes and goes through several changes as it does, ending with the determination of the Pharaoh not to allow a messiah to be born to free the Hebrews, and to drown every one of their sons in the Nile. “Birth of deliverance” is an even longer track, over eleven minutes, and details the birth and hiding of Moses in the rushes near the river's bank. It's hard to describe what I'm hearing here. It's exactly like the soundtrack to a major motion picture, and it's a tribute to the skill and vision of the band and the players in the drama that it gives you shivers just to hear it. Vocal choirs, string orchestras, narration by actors (actual stage actors, called in for this project) and superbly clear and direct singing all make this album an absolute joy to listen to, and quite an experience.
Even in between the musical passages and the singing, and the narration, there are sound effects, speech and actions as if the movie this could be the soundtrack to is playing out on a big screen in front of us. It's so evocative, it's hard to remember you're not actually watching a film. It's almost wrong, even impossible, to review this track by track; it's something you have to experience as one overall thing. It almost does it a disservice to break it down, but take my word for it, this is one incredible album and if it were produced in the West this would be a massive hit and far better known than it is. It's part of a planned trilogy, but I would have to say that with no sign of part two after seven years, well, it's probably unlikely we'll ever get to hear the completion of the story, which is a real crime. But at least we have this opus to keep us happy. Stunning stuff.
TRACKLISTING
1. Sorrow
2. Slaves for life
3. Birth of deliverance
4. Midian
5. Ziporah
6. The burning bush
7. The wooden staff
8. Return to Egypt
9. Ten plagues
10. Land of the dead
I know, I know! I hardly really reviewed it. But it's such a sumptuous masterpiece that a short review of the kind I'm doing here would not in any way do this album justice. It deserves to be listened to, not really reviewed. You need to soak it in, luxuriate in it, drown in it, feel yourself being pulled in and under and never want to resist. It's more, so much more, than a metal album, more even than a rock opera, and if it were somehow filmed it would even be more than a movie. It's literally the story of a people, of their history and their struggles, their despair and their eventual triumph, their release from bondage and their quest for the land God had promised them.
It's all this, and so much more. For us, here and now, it's proof positive that amazing, inspiring, enthralling and captivating music is being made in this country, and the metal bands of Israel, certainly this one at any rate, could teach their more famous counterparts in the West a thing or two.