ORPHAN HATE – Blinded By Illusions

When illusions take away your view from the essentials you run the risk to miss the right exit in the labyrinth of the surreal, while hurrying in full speed. With steam hammer techniques and aslant adjusted blade bones it should be possible to pave a way straight through. However, ORPHAN HATE does it in another way: they are aware of blinded by their illusions – their dream of the realization of a steady growing band. In the consequence the blunt steam hammer isn’t to rage on Blinded By Illusions. The crew out of Berlin/Germany rather focuses on their Trash Metal roots paired with melody since their founding back in 2004. To say it in a different way: the sound robe is perfectly tailored for female vocalist Sina Niklas. The front woman is clearly ORPHAN HATE’s core; she dominates the songs with her powerful voice and by the way Sina growls much better than some of her genre colleagues. The shouts and the clean, melodious vocals haven’t been shortened compared to that and know how to satisfy all along the line. I read in the one and other media line that the band should be a might on stage. If the interplay between the specific vocal styles is as tight on stage as on this release, than hats off! The voice is conveyed by a lot of playfully good ideas and riffs; every once a while Soulfly shines through. A track like Circus has its own class – this is the outputs’ dobbin for me (check out the finished video by now, already released on the known sites). So powerful the first songs of Blinded By Illusions are hammered straight out of the speakers, so emotional it ends up with ballad tunes in the last song Fragrance. And in between? There is one downer I want to chalk up to the debut: by increasing playing time the song writing gets predictable. Even if everything is technically correct, the steady returning interplay between riffs and solos, pounding grooves and melodious parts gives Blinded By Illusions a smooth and continuous touch. One is inevitably waiting for the next melodious part and/or the clean vocals. More surprising elements would have made this record more interesting. But I’m sure, ORPHAN HATE won’t push back by this, in fact they come closer to their illusion.