Шығыс металл тобы: Orphaned Land

Israeli metal band

Orphaned Land is an Israeli metal band formed in 1991. They are known to combine Mizrahi and Maghrebi Jewish, Arabic, Turkish, and other Middle Eastern and North African musical elements, with metal (with particular influence from Yemenite Jewish and, in their early years, Moroccan Jewish Music), as well as from Sephardic music, and other sounds from the Mediterranean. They have also included "metalized" versions of various piyyutim in all of their albums since El Norra Alila. The band are considered to be the pioneers of oriental metal. Orphaned Land have gone through several lineup changes over the years, but have retained two founding members of the band, Kobi Farhi (vocals) and Uri Zelcha (bass). They are joined by Matan Shmuely (drums), Chen Balbus (guitars/saz) who replaced co founding member Matti Svatizky in 2012, and Idan Amsalem (guitars/bouzouki) who replaced co founding member Yossi Sassi in early 2014. Their lyrics promote a message of peace and unity, particularly between the three main Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity). The name "Orphaned Land" comes from the lyrics of a Yehuda Poliker song and reflects "a paradox" to the term "Holy Land." Four of their six albums are concept albums relating to the concept of Light and darkness. Despite Orphaned Land's songs drawing on biblical themes, the band have said that they are not religious, with the majority of the band members identifying as atheist or agnostic, and are known for their ambivalence towards organized religion, blaming it as the cause of bloodshed and hatred. Kobi Farhi claims that metal is a kind of "religion." despite the heavy metal genre being considered taboo in, and with Israel being considered an enemy of many of these countries. In the Arab world, metal music is part of the underground Orphaned Land once toured in Europe with a Jordanian band who wasn't allowed to play in their home country. In 2013, Orphaned Land toured Europe with the Palestinian band Khalas which Farhi claims proved that Jewish Muslim coexistence is possible. The two bands would issue a split album with each other in 2021, entitled "The Peace Series Vol 1." The only Islamic country in which the band has played is Turkey; however, they were invited to play Dubai, but the show was cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic. They have played in Turkey over 25 times which Muslim fans all over the world would attend, especially those from the Middle East, Iran, and Morocco. They quickly realized, however, that they are "from a different place, a place with different temperature, culture, and colours, that is also the source of all the monotheistic beliefs," as explained by frontman Kobi Farhi. The band chose to write music that better projected this, incorporating middle eastern melodies and folk rhythms into their sound. In 1992, they changed their name to "Orphaned Land," believing that this name better suits their newer, more melodic style, which they dubbed oriental metal. This is a theme they would continue to use throughout their next three concept albums, as well. After the release of El Norra Alila in 1996, Orphaned Land went into "this unknown hiatus,"

In 2008, Orphaned Land was featured in the documentary Global Metal, a film by the creators of Metal: A Headbanger's Journey.

In January, 2010, Orphaned Land released the follow up to Mabool, and their fourth album, entitled The Never Ending Way of ORWarriOR. In Hebrew, the word "or" (אור) means "light," thus ORwarriOR can be translated as "light warrior" or "warrior of light," and is the band's third concept album. Like El Norra Alila, ORwarriOR explores themes light and darkness; this time the album is about the battle between the darkness, a place of questions, and the light, a place of answers. The album has a different sound than Mabool, was produced and mixed by Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, and made free to download for any fan who lives in a "number of" MENA countries. The first single from the CD was titled "Sapari" and was put on Myspace with two other tracks, "Vayehi OR" and "Disciples of the Sacred Oath II," a sequel to a song from the deluxe edition of El Norra Alila. In early 2011, ORWarriOR was rated the Metal Storm number one progressive metal album of 2010 by users with 421/1130 total votes. On May 22, 2010, Orphaned Land performed as the opening act to Metallica's show in Israel. Orphaned Land then went on a festival tour in the summer of 2010, promoting The Never Ending Way of ORWarriOR, with appearances at festivals such as Wacken Open Air, Summer Breeze Open Air, Sonisphere Festival, Gods of Metal, Rock Hard Festival and more. After the summer festival tour, Orphaned Land, along with Swallow the Sun, went on a North American tour in support of Katatonia. Orphaned Land then followed this with a tour of Europe alongside Ghost Brigade supporting Amorphis. In February 2011, Orphaned Land performed at the Riviera cultural festival at VIT University in Vellore, India. In February 2012, they returned to India and played at the Alcheringa festival at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. On June 19, 2011, Orphaned Land performed at the French Metal Festival Hellfest held in Clisson. Orphaned Land is known to employ belly dancers at their shows, however for this show, Lebanese belly dancer Johanna Fakhry reached out to Orphaned Land and requested to perform with the band there. While Kobi Farhi agreed to this request, he warned her that it could be dangerous for her. Fakhri decided to join them on stage anyway. At this performance, Farhi and Fakhry held up the Israeli and Lebanese flags side by side at the end of the concert as a gesture of peace. After word in Lebanon spread about this performance, Fakhry's parents expressed outrage towards her for this action, she was ridiculed online by Arab communities, and Hezbollah issued a death warrant to her. Fakhry has not returned to Lebanon since then, and has remained in France. According to Farhi, Orphaned Land has invited her to shows in Israel, but she has rejected the offers out of respect for her parents' wishes. In 2011, Orphaned Land played two concerts in Israel to celebrate their 20th anniversary. On October 24, the band released a live music and video album entitled The Road to Or Shalem featuring recordings of this concert to celebrate their milestone. On June 11, 2012, guitarist Matty Svatitzky announced his departure from the band, citing personal issues. Matti Svatitzky was replaced by Chen Balbus, a young musician who was had performed live with them, previously. In 2012 an online petition opened up requesting the Norwegian Nobel Committee consider Orphaned Land to be awarded the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, which the band's label, Century Media Records, supported. and the highly acclaimed Israeli Arab singer, Mira Awad, provided female vocals for it. On January 7, 2014, Orphaned Land announced on their Facebook page that guitarist, multi instrumentalist, and co founding band member Yossi Sassi had left the band. He was replaced by guitarist Idan Amsalem. Orphaned Land won the Metal Hammer award for "Global Metal Band of the Year 2014". The band also released a new music video for the track "Let the Truce Be Known," directed by Vadim Machona.

In 2017, former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett contacted Farhi, in his search for artists that work for peace between people, and asked him to perform in a song about peace. The two sides immediately clicked and started collaborating. Together with Mira Awad, Farhi sings in the song "West to East" on Hackett's album, The Night Siren. According to Farhi, Hackett offered to either play a guitar solo on an Orpahend Land album or to pay Farhi directly for his performance, and Farhi chose the guitar solo. Hackett appears on the song Chains Fall to Gravity from their upcoming album. On January 26, 2018, Orphaned Land released their sixth album, entitled Unsung Prophets & Dead Messiahs, and is the band's fourth concept album. Once again utilizing the concepts of light and darkness to convey their message, the album is based around Plato's Allegory of the cave to explain how humanity embraces the darkness and are afraid to break their chains and embrace the light. Farhi considers it to be their "protest album". For Unsung Prophets & Dead Messiahs, Orphaned Land wanted to combine the accessible, "upfront" sound of All Is One with the conceptual and progressive sound of Mabool and ORwarriOR, believing that would lead to the creation of "the best Orphaned Land album". In September 2018, Orphaned Land won the 'Video Of The Year' award at the Progressive Music Awards 2018 in London, for their video, Like Orpheus. The music video is based on a true story about a Muslim girl who used to attend metal shows in Israel. A photo taken of her in a hijab with the lead singer of Behemoth in his corpse paint went viral, after which her parents forbade her from associating with the "metal world." The music video depicts a Haredi man and a Muslim woman attending a Kreator concert at night, while hiding their association with the metal community from their families.