(source:https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/5Rand/Ordhalia/1342939/)
2025 marks ten years since Italian melodic death metallers 5Rand burst onto the scene. Under different circumstances, I’d say that the release of an album exactly ten years after the band's inception would be a fluke, or a mysterious twist of fate. But when it comes to 5Rand, this is far from being the case.
Six years after the release of Dark Mother – a record that, in my opinion, positioned the quartet as one of the most promising bands to watch – 5Rand comes to us with their third record Ordhalia, the first to be released through the Spanish record label Art Gates Records. After such a gap between records, the most natural thing to do would be to ask, “what has changed?”. And the answer, while being obvious at first glance, is far more complex than it seems.
With Ordhalia, the Italian quartet seems to maintain the heaviness that characterizes their body of work, but this time the fury that constituted the essence of Dark Mother and Sacred/Scared is swapped in favor of a more controlled chaos. If we remember songs like “Erase” or “Cordyceps” from that first record, or “Several Injuries” and “Old Angel Midnight” from the sophomore, we realize how sonically unstoppable they sound. The band doesn’t care for tempo changes or more introspective passages; they just deliver unquestionable feats of relentlessness with fine layers of melody, and, believe it or not, they manage to balance it appropriately and make it work really well. On Ordhalia, things take a very different turn: The band seems to know better when it might be the right time to fire on all cylinders or to just pause and let the listener reflect for a while.
This “controlled chaos” opens doors to a more versatile record that is unmistakably an opus of melodic death metal, but quickly leans into a lot of uncharted and unexplored territories for the band, blending industrial, acoustic, and even gothic influences. Gentle piano passages and soft semi-acoustic melodies are prominent in this record and help the listener achieve different goals, whether it is to immerse themselves in the psychological experience the record provides (“Lullaby For The Broken”, “The Nihilist”) or to experience the exact same melancholic torture that the singer is experiencing (“Ordhalia”).
Speaking of vocals, Julia Elenoir’s performance is definitely a highlight. The perfect balance of this record is not only achieved by knowing how to measure heaviness and mellowness, but also by letting her versatility shine in the appropriate moments. While her gutturals are a perfect fit for the more furious passages of the album (“Bloodlife”, “Ritual of Silence”, “Silent Line”), her cleans, while conveying melancholy, also work well in a layered manner, as seen in “Lethargy”. The production also helps her cleans to be more understandable to the ears of the listener, something that was a major handicap in the two previous records.
Guitar-wise, the record seems to take a turn for the melodic side of things. Not only are we getting more of the aforementioned piano and semi-acoustic passages, but the lead guitar lines have also improved exponentially, giving room to guitar solos that are also used wisely: They are not featured on all tracks, but when they appear, they’re short yet easily memorable, making them an effective feature of the album and not just something that’s overexploited. The production, as stated, contributes to the quality of the album. The vocals, while improved per se, are easier to grasp and understand. The drums and bass are also well-produced: Easy to notice and never buried in between the vocals or the guitars.
“Ordhalia” acts as a surprising statement on many levels. It is the 5Rand’s shortest record to date, running at only 36 minutes, however it showcases a level of musicianship that makes one wonder why the band isn’t already a household name in the metal scene. It is as versatile as it is complex; it is as atmospheric as it is brutally heavy; it is as chaotic as it is gentle. But most importantly, when we consider the way the songs are built and match it with the length of the album, we realize that bigger doesn’t always mean better. 5Rand would rather deliver us 36 minutes of fiercely heavy-yet-astonishingly introspective well-structured metal than 40 or 50 minutes of an unlistenable heavy mess. The most wonderful thing about Ordhalia’s “controlled chaos” is that you can find it everywhere, and it doesn’t take away the heaviness or sonic brutality; on the other hand, it adds to the beauty.
