Quick, name a band that far, far more people would be obsessed with if they could only be induced to listen to them, even just once.
In answer, I give you the wait to get out of the main carpark after Bloodstock 2021, where I had control of the stereo in a car filled with my then boyfriend and his mates. My musical crossover with the other occupants of the car basically consisted of Green Lung and er…not much else. Someone asked for a concept album of some description, so – fully expecting to be made to turn it off five minutes in – I put on one of my all-time favourites of the art: Mabool by Orphaned Land. Not only did the entire car listen to the whole thing (before we actually got out of the carpark, no less), but I then also had to gently break it to them that Orphaned Land rarely, if ever, play over here. Even I’ve only seen them three times, and all three were Bloodstock sets (main and acoustic in 2014, plus one in 2018). Also, three guesses whose (now) ex-boyfriend has been low-key obsessed with Orphaned Land ever since?
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the rub when it comes to Orphaned Land, one of my favourite bands of all time. Very much a niche band on paper, with no nice, neat little genre box to put them in, and big sprawling biblical themes writ large across their extensive discography. Their music and aesthetic is unashamedly middle eastern (both Israeli and Arab), which further puts them into a niche as far as the average metal fan is concerned, and they don’t play live often enough (over here, anyway) to be discovered that way. And like so many of my favourite bands, they exist pretty much alone. There are no close genre neighbours that you might stumble upon them through. I haven’t got a list of bands you might like if you enjoyed All Is One, because they’re just that bloody singular. They’re proggy, experimental, uplifting and epic, with a pitch black deathy, doomy heart, and I’ve never found anyone else quite like them.
And yet. I’ve made enough people listen to them over the years (for precisely the above reasons), and time after time the reaction is along the lines of “wait, what? I need more of this who are they”. Because if you can look past all the things that make them look like an incredibly niche band inhabiting their own little corner of metal many miles away from the mainstream, the big reveal is that their music is actually some of the most accessible I’ve ever found under the umbrella of metal. While still being proudly and indisputably metal. If you can get people through the metaphorical bloody door, as it were.
With all this in mind, if you’re new to the phenomenon that is Orphaned Land, an album like this one is actually a pretty good place to start. Like any band that have been going for nearly 30 years (founded in 1991, as Resurrection), the back catalogue can be a little overwhelming, so the easiest way in is via the biggest and best-known songs. Every album has its highlights, so listen to those, and then go and explore the albums based on your favourite highlights. Or, even better, see them live and do the same thing, but I’ve already covered why that’s generally fairly difficult.
First up is a lengthy epic from their lengthy epic Mabool (2004): the title track, Mabool (The Flood), the intro of which still, 15+ years after I first heard it, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It catches the tranquil fury of quietly persistent, encroaching water, before things kick up a notch and Kobi Farhi (lead vocals and Jesus lookalike, amongst other things) lets rip over a whirling storm of melodic chaos, alternating comfortably between growling anger, wistful cries, and suitably biblical Pronouncements. It’s the perfect introduction to what Orphaned Land are all about, and if you like this, you should check out Mabool. And if you like Mabool, you’re in for a treat, because nearly half of this album (6/15 tracks) is from there. This and the next track, The Storm Still Rages Inside, are technically two separate tracks, but they appear on Mabool as a pair, and they’re usually taken as such. For the most part, you can forget you’re listening to a live album here, but the audience participation does accent The Storm Still Rages Inside nicely in places, especially just before and during The Solo: if you were wondering where prog comes into this, the guitar solo work should point you in the right direction. If nothing else, there’s ample time to go and put the kettle on during this one in particular, just make sure you’re back before Kobi starts reciting scripture, and you’ll be fine. Also, if the bit at the end catches in your throat and makes you a bit emotional, please take this opportunity to grab a box of tissues, there’s a song coming up that you’ll need them for.
Next up is Like Orpheus, which is from a different album and era entirely, and yet is so clearly the same band that I think this is roughly where most people will realise just how distinctive and singular Orphaned Land really are. This is from Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs (2018), a very different album to Mabool, yet it’s still pure Orphaned Land, with all the melody, complex vocal work and riffs that are their hallmark. Then, possibly a touch counterintuitively, we’re back to Mabool with The Kiss of Babylon, one of the big, soaring, theatrical numbers that drew me into that album the first time round. There is more variety after this one though, honest.
And then by way of the catchy tail of The Kiss of Babylon, we come to what is probably the catchiest, most “radio-friendly” song Orphaned Land have ever given us: Sapari (The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR, 2010). If you’ve never heard Sapari before, I can only apologise for the earworm you’re about to encounter. I mean, I’m not actually all that sorry because it’s a belter of a track, but it will take up residence in your head, unless you’re like a robot or something. There’s a shimmering orchestral introduction here that’s missing from the standard version, but otherwise Sapari is here in all its whirling, melismatic glory, and that glorious passage that begins “It soared from the ark the dove within me”, which I’ve never successfully listened to without cranking the volume up. This version isn’t the clean, perfectly orchestrated masterpiece that the studio version is, but it’s still worth listening to.
Next we’re back to Unsung Prophets and Dead Messiahs, with The Cave, which showcases Orphaned Land at their darkest, heaviest and bleakest: “one can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, but one cannot forgive a man who is afraid of the light”. It’s a seething whirl of melodic fury, with Kobi’s plaintive, embittered vocals playing out over the top, intersecting with a choir that pulls no punches. This is followed by In Propaganda from the same album, which continues on a similar theme, but showcasing the traditional middle eastern instruments that partly produce Orphaned Land’s distinctive sound. The contrast here between Farhi’s desperate vocals and the melee of instruments and chanting is even more effective on a live version than it is normally. And then, much as The Storm Still Rages Inside followed on from Mabool (The Flood), In Propaganda is followed by All Knowing Eye, just as it is on the album. This is more in the same vein as the previous two tracks, but also (fittingly) provides the middle ground between the metallic fury of The Cave and the traditional chaos of In Propaganda.
Did you grab a box of tissues when I suggested it earlier? I hope you did, because the next track is from All Is One (2013), and it’s called Brother. I can count on one hand the number of times this song hasn’t turned me into a sobbing, bereft wreck, and the three times I’ve heard it live are very much not on that list. As for that acoustic set at Bloodstock? I cried a full face of makeup off. One of Kobi Farhi’s real strengths as a vocalist is his ability to get you up and singing along, only unleash God’s wrath on you a minute later, then break your heart clean in two thirty seconds later, and this is solidly the latter. And knowing that the brothers in question are Itshak and Ishmael (representing the Jewish and Arab peoples respectively), does not make it any easier to listen to.
In the nicest possible way, the following track isn’t one of their more exciting (A Never Ending Way, from El Norra Alila), but Brother tends to be a bit of a centrepiece live, so that’s possibly deliberate. In any case, it gives everyone a break before one of their most epic songs and, for me, quite possibly the single best thing they’ve ever done: Birth of the Three (from Mabool). I’ve deliberately not gone into the mythology and tales that underpins a lot of Orphaned Land’s work, mainly because it’s more fun discovering them through the music in my experience, partly because when Orphaned Land do exposition songs, they sound like this. This sets up the entire premise of the Mabool album, and does so while being technically brilliant, impossibly catchy, vocally beautiful, and the whole thing thunders along to a glorious climax that most bands would finish an album on, not start one. Also, the passage that begins “the lion’s roar was heard by all” is another one that should be listened to at maximum volume. It’s superb.
As on the album, it’s followed by Ocean Land, which is a melodic prog tour de force and starts the album winding up to finish on some less intense crowd-pleasers and singalong numbers, the first one being probably the biggest ‘hit’ the band have had to date, All Is One (from the album of the same name, unsurprisingly), In Thy Never Ending Way (ORwarriOR, and where the title of this live album comes from), and Norra El Norra from Mabool. The latter is probably my favourite of theirs (as opposed to their best), and honestly this is where the whole live album thing sours for me slightly. Up to now it’s been cool, but these final three really make me wish I was there, singing my heart out. They’re the big tracks at the end that everyone sings, and even if you don’t know the words, you can figure enough of them out to join in by the end of the first chorus. You know the ones. Orphaned Land’s Fear of the Dark, as it were.
Norra El Norra is entertaining for entirely unexpected reasons though – it’s in Hebrew, and I’d never really thought about it before, but obviously a Tel Aviv crowd can sing the whole thing word perfectly (unlike yours truly, although that’s never stopped me). Hearing an entire crowd sing it note perfect is an experience in its own right, and it’s a lovely thing to finish the album on, as is hearing Kobi chat to the crowd early on in the song, and drop an emphatic “fucking” in the middle of a stream of flawless Hebrew. Which sums them up as a band in a lot of ways, honestly.
So there we have it, Orphaned Land’s latest live opus. Obviously I love it, but then I was always going to, and so will anyone else who appreciates their unique brand of metal, but it’s also a solid way into the band for anyone at a loss as to where to start. There’s a good mix of tracks from their last few albums (albeit with a heavy emphasis on Mabool, but it is their magnum opus), and it does a pretty good job of showing even the uninitiated listener all the heavy, theatrical, doomy, proggy, heart-breaking and singalong facets of Orphaned Land, in all their grand, sprawling glory.
Now, if we could have some actual UK dates that aren’t a solitary, apparently random mid-January Sunday night in Manchester…?
(9.5/10 Ellie)
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