Interview with Kobi Fahri about ORwarriOR:
CLICK ON THE YOU TUBE LINK TO SEE PART 2 OF THE INTERVIEW
Teaser video for the new album
Orphaned Land is the legendary, flague carrier of the Middle Eastern metal world.
formed in 1991 under the moniker "Resurrection".
In 1992, after a period of research and self-realization, the band decided to focus on the actual and cultural reality of the middle-east region and therefore changed its name to "Orphaned Land".
Orphaned Land is an explorer of various musical styles and existing ideas/concepts worldwide. They combine philosophies and religious concepts in their diverse music, which is based on metal music, yet the sky is the limit when it comes to musical richness and Orphaned Land: they combine ancient folk instruments such as Saz, Kanoon, Oud, Bouzouki, 20 different percussion types, using 6 languages and singing styles from various cultures worldwide, while using and mixing the monotheistic religions,- Judaism, Islam and Christianity with a rainbow full of cultural elements.
Day after day, in every news program on this planet, the Middle-East conflict is a major topic and it is one of the reasons the world we all live in is a world apart. For decades every attempt to make peace between Israel and the Arabian world has remained futile and the death toll keeps rising. Where politicians have failed, a mere metal band daringly labelling its style “Jewish Muslim Metal” or “Middle Eastern Progressive Metal” has actually achieved the unimaginable and united Israeli and Arabian people in spite of all their cultural, religious and political differences and conflicts!
Israel's ORPHANED LAND is probably the only band from this country that has managed to succeed at building up a huge following among Muslims and Arabian people. These fans communicate freely via the band’s social networking pages, some of them even proudly bearing
ORPHANED LAND tattoos, even though that puts them at huge risk in their home countries! Unfortunately, the ongoing political and military struggles still prevent ORPHANED LAND from playing in the home countries of its Arabian fans and friends.
As recent movies like “A Headbanger’s Journey” and “Global Metal” (in which ORPHANED LAND was featured) showed: the loudest, heaviest and most controversial music on earth can act as a universal language, bridging between opposites and overcoming all the obstacles that exist in our hearts and minds. The African musician Fela Kuti once said: "music is the weapon of the future" - ORPHANED LAND is the living proof of that!
With its brand-new, fourth album, entitled“The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR”, an opus that took five years of hard work, ORPHANED LAND has created an epic manifest beyond any political or religious agenda. Vocalist Kobi Farhi states: “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 & 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.”
ORPHANED LAND spent over 600 hours in the studio cooperating with The Arabic Orchestra of Nazareth, using multilingual vocals (e.g. English, Hebrew, Arabic, Yemenite), countless Oriental as well as other traditional instruments such as: saz, santur, arabian flutes, middle-eastern percussions, cumbus, bouzouki, violins, various kinds of guitars, piano and last but not least, the excellent production skills of Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, Opeth) who played keyboards and mixed the album. The result is simply one of the most diverse and atmospheric albums the music world has ever seen, heard and felt.
“The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR” is a sophisticated concept album taking ORPHANED LAND’s unique brand of exotic, heavy music to soaring new heights in terms of complexity and catchiness. It is exactly this duality that makes “The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR” so special:
you can delve into the profound arrangements or you can simply enjoy its accessible melodies and captivating riffs. The album itself is musically and lyrically divided into three parts providing a structure that is essential to fully understand the highly elaborate story of “The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR”.
In his much-lauded book “Heavy Metal Islam”, author Mark Levine named ORPHANED LAND as the most influential metal band in the Middle East. Now it is time to go beyond that and tell the world that after Bay Area Thrash, Norwegian Black Metal, Finnish Folk, and Swedish Death Metal -
The time has come for Middle Eastern metal to take over!
Holas, saludos amigos!!! from Australia wondering if oneeeeeeeee dayyyyyyyy will be possible to have you guys here. I like your band since I was living in Uruguay, I hope that one day I will get to see you guys live.
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![[ jonathan ]](http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/38/s_d718fd61d2de496080e47e5547b569a6.jpg)
