Review Summary: .حتى هذا هو ما يحدث عندما يجتمع الصوت العربية على ضوء التدريجي المعدني
Hailing from Israel is a band named “Amaseffer”. The band started with the drummer, Erez Yohannan, who started a project to recite the story of Moses from the slavery period. Slowly, as he progressed two guitarists also joined him and had been writing this album for over a year. The vocalist that joined them couldn’t keep with their schedule so, they decided to break it off and use guest vocalist instead. This album mainly features Mats Leven as lead vocals. Other vocalist such as Kobi Forhi (Orphaned Land) and Angela Gossow (Arch Enemy) accompanied the album too. The album covers from when the king of Egypt orders his soldiers to kill all the male babies till Moses releases the first plague killing all the firstborns in Egypt. I must also note that “Slaves for Life” is part one of a trilogy.
The Focus of the album is to take film score like production (the band worked a whole film score for Arabic movie “Altalena” before the album finished) and combine it with Progressive music. Most of the album relies on symphonic music and ambient noises such as; horses, people whispering, dialogue, and storm effects. There are also quite a few Middle Eastern instruments thrown in there too. The guitars don’t appear throughout the entire album, it enters and exit as it pleases. The guitaring itself isn’t really impressive, it is there solely to create an atmosphere so they don’t really do anything show offy excluding the track “The Wooden Staff” in which shredding will occur. The drumming and the drum tone in general does a great job accompanying the atmosphere of the album by keeping it simple. While most of the album is symphonic, metal passages sometimes join in, while the metal passages aren’t really breathtaking, but it gets the job done.
The vocals haves a soft raspy tone to them with an Arabic accent, a great storytelling-like substance to them. Lyrically the album tells the story (both English and Arabic) from a 3rd person perspective, at times it switches to 1st person. Like when Jochebed sends Moses into the sea in “Birth of Deliverance”, “Hush my baby don’t you cry, My love for you is eternal, Like the Everlasting Fire, that light up the darkest corner of my soul”. The tracks ranges from six to eleven minutes excluding the intro and “Return to Egypt” which runs for three minutes and under.
The opening track is basically a 2 minute opener with someone scribbling on a piece of paper, then getting on a horse to supposedly deliver a message. It also features some flute and acoustic playing. Soon after the title track opens up with a standard Arabic male melody with slaves chanting in the background working on something. The track is basically an introductory in the world and the time it is representing “In a land of two races, a million sands ago, where pharaohs rules black magic thrives”. This track basically introduces everything the album has to offer in its eight minutes. My gripe about this track is that while it is strong, it doesn’t really capture the chaos of soldiers going door to door hacking male babies into bloodmeat, it would had been nice if they had thrown in segments of mothers crying or something to that effect. During “The Wooden Staff” there is this cool whisper thing going on that goes from the right earphone to the left earphone then back again with a dissonant guitar ring in the background. Also during “Ten Plagues” there is a full two minute dialogue in Arabic tongue which is really cool because you have a sense of exactly what to picture in your head thanks to the sound effects. Each song title clearly states the section they are going to cover within the song.
Unfortunately,for some people, this album is one hour seventeen minutes, you will be encouraged to listen to it from start to finish but it leaves a satisfactory feeling. Also during the time, there simply aren’t enough parts that you will remember, no real vocal hooks, nothing that melts your face. Sure the album is truly epic but most of the time, it flies over your head. This album could have been made much better, so I hope to see what they can do for the second outing.
