Music: Folk Black Metal
Website: http://www.arafel-band.com
Country: Israel
Cool songs: The Birth, The First Battle, The Requiem
ARAFEL is an Israeli band, created in 1997 by former Soviet Union origin youngsters. They started with pagan black metal, influenced by Slavonic folk music. After some years they finally agreed to play folk black metal and recorded their first full length album (in Poland) titled The Way Of Defender. The whole thing is about 13th century Russian Great Duke, Alexander Nevsky.
After listening to this album, Ive got two things to say: BUY IT! And if you do not have the money, sell everything, your car, your family your soul and just buy this CD. Everyone should have something like this in own CD shelf. And this is not only for the black metal enthusiasts. Those six compositions enslaved in this disc give so much pleasure than anyone could ever imagine. This music simply rocks! Kicks ass! Everything starts very raw and sometimes even brutal. And from the very beginning the music shows its strength, which is the variety of everything: sounds, motifs, moods and pace. You will find here elements of black, death, thrash, power, heavy and folk metal! It is amazing that few guys from Israel were able to create so fresh and original compositions the riffs are not fleshy, but are raw and pulverize with their power. They are changing constantly, there is no place for stagnation. In The First Battle the strong influence of DIMMU BORGIR is very audible. It looks like ARAFEL took them as a model, which is all right, because such high format star is a good guiding star for the beginners in this field. The brutal atmosphere from the beginning is created by the fascinating drums. They are extremely fast and furious, simply blow up the mind of the listener, there shouldnt be any place for other things in your head apart from this music. This mixture is absolutely outstanding and what makes everything more exciting, is the fact, that every song lasts longer than six minutes, so weve got over 40 minutes of pure metal in its best form. Candlelights hoarse vocal is a magnificent appendix to the whole and glues everything, so that it creates a cool stuff. And the last thing: in my humble opinion, The Requiem is the coolest song in this album. What makes me think so? The middle and the final solos, which are simply devastating. This is an ideal end which makes you want to thrive for more.
ARAFEL is an obligatory position for anyone who declares metal as favorite genre of music. Such treasure will not appear again for a long time. It does not matter, if you like black metal, or not, this album has to be listened to. It is your duty as a Me(n)tal Maniac.
note: 10/10
Tracklist
1. The Birth
2. Ten Shots
3. The First Battle
4. On The Dark Way
5. The Ice
6. The Requiem
Total playing time 42:58
Line-up
Candlelight – Vocals
Felius – Guitars
Mihail – Guitars, Bass
Leshii – Drums
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