The Art of Prog

NOTE: Greg Hasbrouck interviewed Orphaned Land vocalist Kobi Farhi in June of this year.

Greg: It’s a pleasure to speak to you; I’m a big fan of yours.

Kobi: Thanks a lot. Thank you. The pleasure is mine.

Greg: Let’s start off some place easy. Since there are some people who are unfamiliar with your music, and even those of us who are may not know how to accurately describe it, how would you describe Orphaned Land to someone who’s never heard your music?

Kobi: It’s a very good question, you know. Because Orphaned Land, on one hand, is a Metal band. On the other hand, we are maybe one of the most unusual Metal bands around. I guess that part of the answer really relates to the fact that it comes from a region such as the Middle East. Being an Israeli, living in Israel, and the complexity of being an Israeli… The Jewish people came from all over the world, gathered together, immigrants, again in their home land, and brought so many habits and cultures along with them. And of course living here, surrounded by many cultures such as Christianity, Muslim and Judaism all together. So I would say that Orphaned Land is Middle Eastern, universal, Progressive Metal band.

Greg: That seems to be as accurate a description as any. So… you mentioned you guys are from Israel, which figures heavily into your music. I read in an interview, that when you were starting out, you used the fact that there weren’t really any Metal bands from Israel to your advantage, because it provided you a blank slate to work from. Does that contribute to your uniqueness… the fact that you’re not part of a “scene”?

Kobi: I don’t think it has a direct connection to it. What I actually think is, we chose to take as an inspiration, the place we live and the atmosphere of our region, we chose to reflect it in the music. I never found any common sense in living in Israel and trying to make Norwegian Black Metal; which I really like at the of the day, but as an artist I didn’t really find it attractive or interesting or even related to what I can reflect. And I think this is our contribution, we can reflect, we can give an atmosphere to anyone who lives outside of this region. We can reflect, in a musical way, what it is like to live here; the colors, the sounds, the intensity of living here. So I think that, at the end of the day, I’m living in one of the most intense and tragic places of the world, but on the other hand, if I choose to see the positive side of things, I’m living in the most inspiring place on the Earth, in terms of art and politics and cultures.

Greg: One of the things I learned, while preparing for this interview is that you guys, at least four of you, have been playing together for 20 years now.

Kobi: 18, to be precise.

Greg: 18? OK… well, what’s interesting is, in that time, you essentially put out only two full length albums. I know there was seven year layoff and it took five years to write Mabool, and I guess it’s been nearly five years since Mabool. In the end, what do you attribute the lack of output to? Is it circumstance? Is it your process? Is it a combination of factors?

Kobi: There’s many ways to look at it, and I’ll give you a few examples. Each of our albums is very long. The next album, which we are actually recording these days, is… You know, Century Media told me that the limit of music that you can put in a CD is 78 minutes and 30 seconds. And our next CD is 78 minutes and 20 seconds.

Greg: (laughter) So you’re taking things to the limit quite literally.

Kobi: Yeah… so you can say that it is circumstances, on the other hand, you can say that we are so complex, that our music is so diverse, with so many sounds and ideas. We’ve never been songwriters. We always write a story and this is always something like… a theater of music. A song begins in one riff, continues to a completely other riff, and this can go on like that and then the song ends at the other side of the world. So our music is very hard to compose, if you compare it to other bands. The amount of information in it, from the length, and information in every song, it takes a long time. It’s a long process to compose it and to arrange it, and of course the thing is to record it. So I would say that it’s a combination of our living here, which is very intense, and you always fight to find some free time, and life here can be not that easy, in terms of the economy, it terms of security. So all of this together, has pluses and minuses at the end of the day.

Greg: You spoke about the composition of your music, how it can start at one end of the world and end on the other. And obviously, you incorporate instruments which aren’t typically found in Metal music. So I’m curious where is it you draw your influences from outside the genre of Metal?

Kobi: Well first of all, it begins with a musical attitude. Our attitude is that we respect every culture; it’s very interesting for us, its history and its culture… to hear its color. I think it’s an adventure. Even on a spiritual level, since we are people of peace, I think it’s very interesting to get to know the ones that are different from you. You can be a very rich person if you don’t close yourself from the ones that are different from you. So you have friends from all kinds, you learn to sing in so many languages, all kinds of food, you have so many kinds of women around you, and take that to any aspects that you want. So living here and having so many cultures, even just living in Israel, put aside the Middle East, which is very Arabian, just being in Israel and having so many kinds of Jews; that came from Morocco, and from Africa in general, and Eastern Europe and any other Arabian countries… there are so many cultures and so many kinds of Jews. And every one of them is bringing different habits and that goes from food, to clothing, to music. And it’s very rich… I’m a very rich person when I look at things that way. And I actually feel that way as a musician and as a human being that I am privileged to be a very rich man. So, you just have to be here, and to be curious about cultures and you will find yourself combining them in your music.

Greg: You spoke about how elaborate the process is. And if I got this number right, I believe you spent 1,200 hours in the studio recording Mabool. Assuming I have that number correct, can I assume you guys work out of some home studio, as I would expect that would otherwise be quite costly.

Kobi: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t say it was 1,200 hours. Maybe with the homework and the rehearsals it was. But we definitely reached the 600 level.

Greg: In the studio?

Kobi: Which is almost half of it, which is still a lot. We do a lot of homework and we do a lot of work in the studio. The budget the record company gives you is never enough. We always find ourselves having to finance the rest of it from our pockets. Which sucks. But at the end of the day we don’t want to compromise and we can not ask for the record company to just pay us forever. Since we are not just five, ten members who go into the studio and play their songs and we always have this gang that plays with us, if it’s percussions or any other kinds of instruments, violins, etc. So it’s always more expensive, more time and more effort to do it. But this is Orphaned Land, it is what we chose to be. Being in the studio is a nightmare, to tell you the truth.

Greg: Really?

Kobi: Yeah… I can give you a metaphor of birth. The mother is screaming out of pain. At the end, life is created. But the process, the way, the path that she walks is very painful, very long and very tiring. In an artistical way, this is some kind of pregnancy, a very painful process, that at the end of it I get to hold this album in my hands.

(mutual laughter)

Kobi: But that’s the way it is. I suffer a lot when we record an album and I have sleepless nights and very hard moments where I can not reach what I wanted to reach. Since we are not an ordinary band I can not always find some reference that I want to what it should sound like. It is like being completely alone in the dark.

Greg: That’s interesting. You used the metaphor of child birth, and on the forum you’ve spoken about how you wouldn’t pick a favorite Orphaned Land album because it’s like picking a favorite child. And like children, the albums have each been unique. Obviously there was a dramatic shift between El Norra Alila and Mabool. I guess my first question is what do you attribute that to? Because there’s so much time between albums? Because you don’t want to repeat yourself? Because you’re evolving?

Kobi: If you will, take Picasso for example. Every time he painted a painting, he came to a white canvas and then he painted a song. When it comes to the end of the day, you can look at the painting and you can say this is Picasso. But every painting is different from than the other. When it comes to Orphaned Land, and we’re not even comparable to the genius of Picasso, I would say the Metal music is our white canvas. And from that starting point, it will always grow into a musical journey. So our albums never actually repeat themselves. I mean, you can hear that this is Orphaned Land, if it’s El Norra Alila or Mabool, or the earliest stuff or the next album, which is completely different. People thought that we might make some kind of second part of Mabool, which is not true. ORwarriOR is completely different from Mabool. We’re always like that. We simply paint a different painting every time. But also some part of what you said is right. The time between one album to the other and the fact that we evolve, we become more mature, so all the answers are right.

Greg: You mentioned earlier, you don’t consider yourselves songwriters. Is that advantageous, with respect to not repeating yourselves?

Kobi: In the 18 years of our career, I can say that not one of the band members ever came to me and said, “Hey, I wrote a new song.” It never works out like that. Here’s the way I like to describe it, because this is the way we work… we always find a subject that we want to talk about, such as Mabool, such as the Warrior of Light, the new album. According to that subject we’ll actually build the theme and a story, and then we start to build the music. I mean we had a lot of the music that the guys, and even I composed. It’s not actually songs. It’s more like riffs. It’s a riff, it’s an acoustic part, it’s very expressive guitar playing, a guitar solo. It’s like pieces of a puzzle. And then when we have the story, we start to in fit in these parts all together into tracks and songs and eventually an album. So the conclusion is, that during the process even we ourselves don’t know how the picture is going to look like. Only when we’ve finished recording the album, this is the first moment that I know how the hell this album looks like.

(mutual laughter)

Greg: You guys are obviously fairly progressive in your approach and you’re all gifted musicians. Could you ever see turning your process on its ear and writing something that’s much more spontaneous, just to see what that picture might look like?

Kobi: Like writing stuff spontaneously?

Greg: Yes. You guys have this very elaborate process that takes years, which sounds very painstaking… you compared it to labor. Could you ever see spinning that process 180 degrees, and just let the music flow?

Kobi: I can tell you that story. I don’t know if it could stand alone for a complete album. But I can definitely tell you, that we have some kind of mixing of friends, that me and Yosi, from my band, we go every Thursday. We meet some childhood friends every Thursday. We sit at another friend’s house, and we just sit there and talk, and eat together and spend some good time together, and then we take guitars… these are friends that are out of the band… just me and Yosi. After we sit for an hour or two, we take guitars and we start to sing. The thing is, we don’t actually compose something, we just take guitar and whatever comes, this is what we sing. It’s like we wait for some kind of information from the music planet or something. And then it begins. And sometimes it can turn off into 30 minutes of singing something… and this is maybe like ten people in the room. Singing altogether… and this is like a creation that is created while we do it. Now I have at several [times] in our career where I actually took my cell phone and recorded what we sang over there. Because if you don’t record it at that moment, you can forget all about it. For the way it was, the structure of what was it. And I can tell you that maybe… 5% of our material is material from those sessions, and I recorded and I used it for Orphaned Land. On the next album there are maybe four parts that were composed like that.

Greg: So, I’m kind of curious about the concept that underlies Mabool. At its heart, Mabool seems to embrace a belief system approaching Universalism. However, I’ve read interviews with you where you’ve talked about your faith. And although you’re not a traditionally religious Jew, you are a spiritual person, and those beliefs stem from the Jewish faith. Can you talk about how Mabool compares to your personal belief system?

Kobi: Mabool is a straight and perfect reflection to my spiritual point of view. Which is combining all beliefs together in a synergy and harmony, and saying that everything, at the end of the day, belongs to one constant. And saying that everybody is right and everybody is wrong. We, in Mabool, try to say in a musical way, we believe that if people would live their life in the way that we compose and play Mabool, you will have heaven on Earth. Because there are so many cultures and languages and motifs combined on this album, on the lyrics, on the spiritual messages, on the synergy of religion and non-religion. It’s combining everything together in harmony, and this is actually heaven on Earth. If you will be able to embrace all cultures and languages and even ones that are different and even opposite from you, the way that we did on Mabool, you will be the richest man on Earth and heaven on Earth will be here, right now. Just think about the music that we make, on one hand, it’s Metal music. We belong to a scene called the Metal scene. And this scene is filled with many kinds Metal styles and many kinds of bands that their name is like CANIBAL CORPSE, SLAYER, and so on. It doesn’t sound that positive when you hear it for the first time. But we like to stretch our limit and I like to call it the tango between God and Satan, because we like to stretch it from black to white. We like to stretch it from non-religion to religion. We like to stretch it by all means. We simply like to go to each side, as a band, and bring the treasures from that side into the center and then to make it balanced. And this is actually the way I live. This is my point of view in spiritual terms and of course in a musical way.

Greg: You referenced “heaven on Earth”. On your forum, someone asked you what you hope to be doing ten years from now and you said, “As for 10 years from now, I hope we will live in heaven on earth and we will change the name from Orphaned Land to Holy Land and we will be a party celebration band.” Do you believe we’re living in the end times?

Kobi: Listen… you can definitely say I’m far from being a reasonable man. I’m a great believer in utopia. Otherwise I will not be interested in bringing children to this world. I have the privilege to have my own point of view and to know myself and the privilege to share it. With people I believe that anyone can find his own way and definitely believe that heaven on Earth is something we can achieve. I don’t think we should live in a state of endless misunderstanding in the world and confusion. I don’t think this is our nature or what we’re supposed to be. When I sit with the friend of mine that I told you about, we always have spiritual conversations and I told him once, “Listen, just imagine a world where killing another man is actually so forbidden, that people and leaders understand it, really understand that within themselves. Imagine the leader of a country, if he would kill or instruct to kill another man, he will actually know that he hurts himself in the most difficult way. If this knowing, will be universal and killing other people will be like an option which is not even considerable.” For example, 99% of the world can not imagine themselves having sex with their own family. A son can not imagine himself having sex with his mother. If people understand, that killing is forbidden, in the same way that having sex with their mother is forbidden, then I believe we will not have any other choice than to talk to each other and try to understand each other. Because what is happening now in the world is having a misunderstanding. On a small level, you fight; you go to court. On a big level you go to war. If we would have this knowledge, that killing is forbidden, we will have no other choice than to talk to each other and try to solve this, and try to understand each other, because it will be the only hope, because killing is out of the question.

Greg: That would be beautiful.

Kobi: I’m a believer of this legend. I believe that music is very a strong power. I don’t think I can change the whole world, but I definitely believe I can change my whole small world… this is my contribution to the world… the way I think, if I tell about it. If it’s an interview we are doing now, or in music or in a song that I can sing. This is the message and this is my purpose here. I don’t think I came here to make a million dollars and to control another nation and stuff like that.

Greg: Wow… that’s a very intriguing and enlightened worldview. So if I may, let’s segue from world issues and talk a bit about something a little lighter… ProgPower. This will be your second appearance. Can you talk a little bit about that first experience?

Kobi: It was an amazing experience. It was the first and only time we played in the U.S.A. and the crowd was amazing; supporting, and singing along, buying merchandise… it was an amazing experience. And of course, seeing ProgPower as a concert, which is so much different from any other festival or place that we played. It’s like a cult festival. I know the tickets are always sold out within a few of days. And people are talking the whole year in the forum about which bands are going to come and discussing progressive music. I think it’s a very special festival and a very quality festival because it’s so non-commercial. ProgPower can easily be a festival for 10,000 people. But I know that Glenn always kept it top quality. And I think Glenn is a great guy and I appreciate him for that and every time we are invite to play ProgPower USA I feel privileged, even more than other festivals with more people.

Greg: Were you at all surprised by how well you were received? I know I was. I’ve been an Orphaned Land fan and was looking forward to your performance, but I was surprised, given that some of your more aggressive elements aren’t typical to the progressive scene.

Kobi: We were surprised very much. We knew that we are maybe the only band that is actually going to play growl. And again, that is because we like to stretch our limits. I knew that people at ProgPower are not really familiar with growl, but then again, I expected them to be fans of progressive music. Which means they are open-minded and are willing to listen to some things they are not familiar with. And it can go from growl to Middle Eastern flavors and instruments, which they are not familiar maybe as well.

This ends Part One of Greg’s interview with Orphaned Land vocalist Kobi Farhi. The complete interview can only be found in the official (printed) ProgPower USA program given to all attendees. If you want to read the entire interview, you have to come to the show!

Final Note: All photos/images used to illustrate this interview are used in compliance with the principles of Fair Use. They illustrate reviews, opinions, and interviews with the band members who created the albums and on whose official web sites and MySpace pages some of these images reside. The image of Orphaned Land live on stage was obtained from the band’s Wiki entry. Photo credit belongs to Leonard Tulipan. The photo of Kobi Farhi on stage is borrowed from the band’s official MySpace page. No copyright violations are intended.