Hell Yeah! Another of my new favorite bands. Mabool just plain kicks ass in every way. It's a very versatile album, so it may not be for everyone.
It is very progressive, but not in the Dream Theater sense...it's somewhere between Savatage and Ayreon. The album contains everything from borderline death metal to middle-eastern folk and chanting. There is
some growling in it, but but only in context with the story. If you don't like death metal vocals, don't be scared off. I don't care for grunts and growls at all, but I have no problems listening to Mabool. The clean vocals probably outweigh the death by about 5 to 1.
The heavy stuff is fast, but still pretty much upper mid-tempo. Nothing really speedy here, not like power/speed or death/thrash metal bands. The riffs are crunchy and very melodic. The mellower stuff has some incredible acoustic stuff courtesy of their very talented songwriter/guitar player, Yossi.
You can download their song "Ocean Land" from the Century Media website at:
http://mp3.centurymedia.com/OrphanedLand_OceanLand_Mabool.mp3
There is also a 60meg video available for that song, if you have high speed internet. Ocean Land is a perfect example of the various faces of Orphaned Land, all wrapped up into one song. It starts with acoustic, and then mixes in the various vocal styles. Only thing missing is the girl who does arabic chants during parts of the album.