The Holy Land Demons – ARALLU’s “En Olam”
Album Review By Zohar Belkin
- Prologue
Every local scene has developed its unique sounds, like Norway’s Black Metal scene. Many countries have their own sounds and many Ethnic groups has their own instruments.
For Israel, this is no different.
One of the local bands in the Israeli scene which played for the past 20 years are ARALLU, which are an inalienable asset to the local Metal Scene.
Throughout the years, these guys developed their own unique sound – Crushing Black Metal tunes, backend up by Goblet drums (Darbukas) and a Baglama Player. This is which makes them sound so Middle Eastern and special. The album “En Olam” also opens with Middle Eastern sounds, that combines well with the powerful guitar playing, and evolves into a beautiful, yet extreme piece of art which contains ethnic sounds, powerful speeches and aggressive tunes.
- En Olam – “No World”
En Olam stands in Hebrew for “No World” – it is the 7th Album of the band ARALLU, and it contains 10 tracks. The overall length of the album is 38 minutes, and it starts with the track “The Center of The Unknown” – The opening act of the album, and it opens up with a beautiful, Arabic-inspired woodwind playing which collides beautifully with the guitars and evolves into a skull crushing track. Another extra-special track is “Achrit Ha’yamim” (Hebrew – “the end of the days”) – featuring a preaching in Hebrew about the Apocalypse and beautiful Baglama playing. From speaking to the band, the preaching is about the end of days and how everyone must believe in God, taken from a real preaching found of the web.
In the aspects of inspiration of the band, from talking to the band members I found the inspirations for writing music is the local middle eastern tunes alongside SLAYER, VENOM, BATHORY, MAYHEM, EMPEROR etc. With these in mind, the band has its unique sound and motives in their music, which brings forth the Israelism in their music and the local musical influences into the front of their stage, resulting in a fresh, unique to ARALLU sounds and lyrics. From the days of the first albums (Like “Satanic War In Jerusalem”) They started inserting those motives, and they kept it for two whole decades.
Overly, I must confess – I have a hard time listening to full albums at once, and always must switch throughout the tracks – this album is a solid Masterpiece in my eyes, and it features everything I am looking in an album. I give this a solid 10 out of 10.
MHF Magazine/Zohar Belkin
