Israel's progressive folk metal masters ORPHANED LAND will release their highly anticipated fourth studio opus, "The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR", in Europe on January 25, 2010 and in the U.S. on February 9 via Century Media Records. Mixed by Steven Wilson (PORCUPINE TREE, OPETH), who is also responsible for several keyboard parts on the new CD, the effort is a sophisticated concept album which takes ORPHANED LAND's unique brand of exotic, heavy music to soaring new heights in terms of complexity and catchiness.

The band is preparing to launch a series of introspective webisodes documenting the making of the album and the first album trailer can be viewed below. This clip features some commentary from Steven Wilson and the band mixed in with live performance footage from Tel Aviv.

"The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR" track listing:

Part I: Godfrey's Cordial – An ORphan's Life

01. Sapari
02. From Broken Vessels
03. Bereft In The Abyss
04. The Path Part 1 – Treading Through Darkness
05. The Path Part 2 – The Pilgrimage To Or Shalem
06. Olat Ha'tamid

Part II: Lips Acquire Stains – The WarriOR Awakens

07. The Warrior
08. His Leaf Shall Not Wither
09. Disciples Of The Sacred Oath II
10. New Jerusalem
11. Vayehi Or
12. M I ?

Part III: Barakah – Enlightening The Cimmerian

13. Barakah
14. Codeword: uprising
15. In Thy Never Ending Way (Epilogue)

Vocalist Kobi Farhi comments on the album's concept and the striking new promo photo (see below): "First of all, I wish to thank each and every one of you for all the comments you left for our new band photo. The comments were from Jews, Christians and Muslims as one. You all know that this unification is what we're all about.

"'The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR' is a concept album revolving around a hero: the warrior of light. This hero isn't someone specific, but could be the listener of the album himself, as this album deals with the problems we are facing in our lives every day. Especially here, in the Middle East, we feel that we are trapped in a loop of confusion and darkness. Living in this region, we see that year after year nothing changes. People continue to die in useless wars and we are trapped in a bloody circle. ORPHANED LAND has been around for 18 years and we continue to sing about the same subjects and stories, because after 18 years we are still living in a tragic, orphaned land. To fight this tragedy we have chosen a peaceful, yet powerful weapon: our music."

Farhi previously stated about the upcoming CD: "As people that were born into the tragedy of our region, we have always been devoted to creating harmony between conflicts, a musical heaven on earth, a tango between God and Satan. Even in the album's artwork we combined Hebrew and Arabic, regardless of the fight between Jews and Muslims. I found a Jordanian guy, specialized in calligraphic artwork. He took letters from Hebrew and Arabic and moulded them in his art to create a symbol of peace. Same goes for our band photo, where we portrayed a synergy between the three monotheistic religions that believe in the same God and yet ridiculously have been killing each other for centuries 'in the name of God' and turned the holy land into an orphaned land. Naturally, we continued this idea of union on a musical level as well and the result is as always crazy, it's a miracle — in our concerts: our Jewish fans sing in Arabic and our Muslim fans sing in Hebrew, brave friendships have spawned and our Middle Eastern metal music destroys all this political witchcraft we have been trapped in for so long. This is a musical journey of hope in lands of war, creating heaven on earth, building a new Jerusalem."

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