"A hard rating for me to give, but aside from "Radiation Decay (Live)," "Broken Epitaph (Live)", and "Unburied Corpse (Rehersal)," most of the music here honestly is kind of junky... had those three tracks been released on a smaller EP, this would have been given a much higher rating... the poor recording quality doesn't help either. However, this is an insightful look into the band's very early years (as indicated by the album's subtitle). It's cool to see how "that" riff on Radiation Decay was re-used on "The Storm Still Rages Inside," later on in the band's career, for example. It also seems that parts of Broken Epitaph were too reused in the Sahara/Beloved's Cry version of The Storm Still Rages Inside, but I'm not totally sure. It's a great archival release, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone other than hardcore Orphaned Land fans, or fans of the most underground, lo-fi early death metal imaginable. I do, however, find the opening of the album quite funny with someone shouting "Sheket!" ("Quiet!") in Hebrew multiple times - the band members were teenagers back then lol"
"Yup, this is a concept album alright! In fact, I think it's quite possibly the greatest metal concept album ever made! Yet, I wouldn't call it Orphaned Land's best album, overall. I'd give that accolade to El Norra Alila, and I would even call the Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR a better overall album than Mabool. But this is easily Orphaned Land's, and indeed possibly the metal genre's, best CONCEPT album. Once you listen to one song, you cannot not listen to the rest of them; they play so well after one another. Somehow Orphaned Land managed to make this album very cohesive, but diverse, yet highly refined despite pioneering a completely new style of metal, here. The last four songs, the Mabool suite, are a large reason why this is such a legendary and successful album - what a way to end such an epic album, perfectly tying together all the themes before them with a very satisfying climax and conclusion. Yossi Sassi's 4 minute long guitar solo on The Storm Still Rages Inside is one of the greatest of all time, up there in my opinion with Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird. My biggest complaint with this album is that the production has not held up well since 2004, and a remix/remaster to make it as dynamic and clear as ORwarriOR is definitely warranted. In terms of sound, I would consider this to be a fusion of Twilight in Olympus-era Symphony X and Morningrise-era Opeth - that is, the melodic, yet virtuoso power metal riffing of the former with the darker production and more abrasive playing of the latter."
"If this were new material or a more comprehensive compilation, I would rate this higher; however, this doesn't add anything to the discography that is worthwhile... one bonus track from All is One (which is a rearrangement and re-recording of the live cover track mentioned below), One bonus track from The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR plus an alternate mix of the same track (which happens to be a cover song), four tracks from a live album (one of which is a non-OL guest performance, and another is a cover song featuring the original artist), and a promotional cover song; not exactly a great selection of songs, in my opinion. I do, however, appreciate how diverse this one is with Greek, Turkish, Mizrahi Jewish, and Arabic influence here."
