ORPHANED LAND: GET READY FOR SOME HOT JEW ON JEW ACTION
Israel’s Orphaned Land have just announced a February 9 release date for their new album, The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR, and, yes, we’re going to try and do one of those excellent Jew on Jew interviews that we sometimes do with a member of the band. But while those pieces usually tend to lean towards the, um, let’s say “sillier” aspects of Judaism, I have a feeling that the members of Orphaned Land might have something headier on their minds. I mean, check out what vocalist Kobi Farhi has to say about the album’s themes:
“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.”
So that’s not exactly like Mookie Singerman discussing doing the electric slide at bar mitzvahs in the 7th grade, is it?
I assume the above statement alone will be enough not only to spark a debate about the quality of Orphaned Land’s music, but also the Israel/Palastine conflict in general. And I gotta say, it’ll be good to watch you cats argue about something that’s not “Lamb of God is gay/Lamb of God r00lz” for a change.
More info on The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR as we get it…
-AR
