Oh, it was great. It was the first time I gave vodka to fans from the stage (laughs). I was very funny. The crowd was very warm and I really liked them so much, that after the show we just went out to meet them, to drink with them and I was completely drunk, because everybody wanted to drink with us vodka. I was fucked up, but everybody was so nice. So how could I say “no”? It was a great day!
Yesterday you had a chance to see a little bit of Moscow. What impression did it produce on you?
Amazing! Amazing. It was very exciting and really amazing. I mean the Kremlin – it’s wonderful. I mean we’ve often seen pictures of this place when people speak about Moscow or when newspapers show pictures, but it was great really see it. And also the University building – I may be mistaken, but it looks like a really communist architecture. It’s very very powerful, and it’s very scary, because the way the University is built – it’s
a very strong architecture, I think. It reminds me the way the inquisition used to build the cathedrals and big churches. They built it very big, so that people would be frightened from the mighty God. And for me it looks like the same will – to make people be afraid of the regime or of the government. But architecture is amazing. It’s well designed and very nice and I really like it. I’m very excited to be here and everybody is so friendly, the girls are so beautiful and the vodka is very tasty (smiles widely) And by the way – to share vodka with fans was just a spontaneous decision. Two minutes before the show I said, “Do you have vodka here? And how do you say “Would you like to drink vodka?”” So they told me “Hotite vodka?” I just managed to learn it and it was just like that. I didn’t know, if it wouldn’t be forbidden or maybe I shouldn’t do it, but I said, “That goes from my heart and that’s what I want to do, I’ll do it!” Then they told me that no band from abroad ever did it, which was very nice that they didn’t. Maybe I’ll do it today also. (laughs) Because it was very funny – all those open mouths like this (opens his mouth widely and rises the head), you 
know! Very very funny.You release albums very often. The breaks between releases are big. And you perform on stage not very often. Do you need the time to get inspired for the next album? Or what is the reason?
It’s two answers actually – about the albums and about the show. About the album- it’s a complicated answer, because living in Israel is very complex. Israel people are mixed with so many cultures, and the country is only 60 years old now. And it is all mixed so much that sometimes the mentality of the people is so different and living in Israel is very hard in many ways – because of the political situation, economic stuff and things like that. Orphaned Land is a musical reflection to this reality – so many cultures and languages and instruments. We reflect so much. Being in Israel means that you are also – in a way – a Russian, you are also Moroccan, you are also Spanish, you are Romanian – this is being Israeli. You have Judaism that unites you, but there are so many cultures in the country. So to create an album of Orphaned Land which reflects all this takes a lot of time. And in our music one song is something and th
e next song is completely different, the third song is again something different. So we cannot produce an album in one year. It never happens. We always want to believe that we can do it, but we never succeed. (laughs) It’s like now it’s four years after “Mabool” and we still work at the new album and we didn’t even finish to write it. I hope we’ll release it this year, because if not – it will be a fact that Orphaned Land produce albums once in six years! (laughs) About the shows – it depends. When we release an album we perform a lot and Russia is the 25th country that we visited. We’ve been to all Europe, Mexico, USA, we did tour all the world, but now that we are four years after the album, the demand for shows goes to decrease all the time, except maybe new places like Russia, where we are now for the first time, but it goes in decrease. In 2005 we made maybe 80 shows, then in 2006 – 50 shows, then in 2007 - 30 shows, and this year we made probably ten shows.
What themes do you touch upon in you new album? What’s hidden behind its concept?
This is a concept album about the subject called the warrior o
f light – and you can interpret this subject in many interpretations. Religiously speaking it can be referred to a Mashiah, Jesus or some savior. In a more normal aspect it could be referred to a warrior that is actually inside each of us. I mean that for us everybody is a warrior of light. We look at this world and we see that a lot of people are always suffering, especially from the place we come from, but not only. Every country has history of suffering and death – even Russia. Murders, holocausts, stupid leaders… And our small contribution to change it is to speak about the light. We don’t want to be a black metal band or some other who speak about darkness. There’s so much darkness around us, so we want to be a light, a light side. This is a light side interview for Darkside! (everybody laughs) So this is what the album is like. We have a character on the album, but everybody who listens to the album is the warrior of light actually. And what about the musical part? Will there be any deviations from your original style or you’ll try to stick to your music?
I think every album of us has its own style. Even though you can hear
it’s Orphaned Land, it’s not going to sound like any other album we did, but we are going to use much more Arabian violins. It’s hard for me to tell, because we didn’t finish it, but it’s going to be more oriental, than the past albums. You pay great attention to the lyrics, and the lyrics of every album are thoroughly thought over. But you write in such complicated languages, that I think only a tiny pro cent of people are able to understand it. Is it important for you that you listeners should understand your message?
First of all we try to put translations in every SD if the lyrics are in Latin, Hibru, Arabic, so the people will be able to understand what we talked about. I don’t even talk myself some of these languages – for example I don’t talk Latin. When we worked with Latin we went to one professor of the University and recorded the way he spoke the words and this is how we learned to pronounce the words. I wish that everybody who listens to the music to understand everything that we wanted to explain in our music, but if someone is there just for the music, it’s o’k. This is the listener’s choice. He is free to decide,
whether he wants to read the lyrics and go to dive into the concept, or whether it’s just the music, guitars and the drum solos – it’s o’k, because the music also tells a story. And how do you write the lyrics in languages that you don’t speak yourselves?
We find friends who help us to translate it into the language needed. We took once a sentence from the Muslim Koran. And surprisingly we have many friends in our country even though we are Israelis, and politically these two are completely enemies. So we have a lot of friends in Jordan, Syria and Egypt, so sometimes they help us – we record how they speak and we use it to learn to pronounce correctly. Sometimes it’s bad news, because once we heard about a fan of ours – the Egyptian police found a CD with our songs using Koran in his house, and he was sent to jail for six months. Just because he was listening to our music and because we used Koran. It’s forbidden. For them it’s like “don’t touch the Koran! Don’t do it!” But we did it in a respectful way, it didn’t matter. He was in prison for six months. I wish to know who it is, because still I don’t know. And one more think I w
ant to know is that I really want to know completely that my fans got into the bottom of our themes, because our theme is very complicated. Some people think that our theme is about God or being religious or being a missioner, which is not true. Orphaned Land main theme is called tango between God and Satan. We take water and fire always, God and Satan or white and black and we put them in a filter so that they would exist together. If you take fire and water – they cancel each other, the water finishes the fire and the fire makes the water turn into steam. So we try to be a filter so that they could be together. If the people understand this concept or they have something against it, I respect it. I don’t claim that I share or have one absolute truth. I think that there are many rivers, all of them are going into the sea and I respect all of the ways. I like black metal, I like Satanism, I like religion. Satanism? What do you like about Satanism?
I think that Satan is motherfucker, son of a bitch, bustard, but he is a friend an the end of the day. It just teaches me not in the way that my father or the God teach me. It teaches m
e like this, “Yeah, you should go there and you will see the light”. And then I go there and I find his leg on my head. So he teaches me by hitting me. But I know kung-fu masters and that’s the way they teach their students. I have a friend, he used to be the champion of Israel n kung-fu and his training was that trainer used to break things on his back – so this is Satan, the way I see it – very clever, very tricky, he is like a master and I admire him for that. He is very tempting, very far from being innocent – and I really adore him for it. I think the way it plays – sometimes it’s great. But I also like God, I mean this is the tango between God and Satan. I don’t say “no” to anything. Maybe the only think that I’ll say “no” to is Nazis, or terrorists that kill children. This is the only one. I don’t want to play my music for them or to listen to them, but even in cases like this once we had a show and there was one guy in the audience with swastika – we didn’t come and kill him, no. But if he attacked us, we certainly would kill him. But we didn’t attack him, we came up to him and talked to him. And we said to him, “Listen, we cannot go on stage and play if you
have this swastika. Here’s a t-shirt of Orphaned Land as a gift. Let’s make a change?” And he threw his t-shirt with swastika into the garbage and took out t-shirt. So we succeeded even to make a friend out of it. It’s always easy to fight, and we try to be something else. Do you believe in God then? And do you separate such notions as beliefs and religion? Because sometimes religion turns out to something artificial rather than something pure. People begin to fight in the name of religion, which is nonsense.
I believe in God with all my heart and I think that religion is a good thing when you turn to moral – how to treat your friends, how to respect your parents, how to be a good man, This is the thing the religion is good for. When it starts to be fanatic – fanatic Catholic or fanatic Jewish or fanatic Muslim – then I don’t agree with it. I think it closes all your ways to listen to the others and this is why we have wars. So religion, if it’s not fanatic – I agree, if it becomes fanatic – I don’t agree. This is why I try to speak about God and I sing lyrics from the Koran. And people say that sometimes I look like Jesus Chr
ist on stage. So I want to mix all of it – I’m a Jew in my passport, but in my heart I just believe in God. I can embrace Jesus and Jewish and sing from the Koran. And to sing is a good thing to do. Because I live in Israel I see so many cultures and so many religions, I want to embrace all of them. I think that I’m a very rich man if I’m doing it, because I get to know so many new kinds of music, so many kinds of food, so many kinds of friends, points of view. I’m a rich man, because I’m just, I’m an orthodox Jew and I don’t care about the rest, I’m narrow-minded like a stupid man. That’s what I wanted to say. Some people stick to the opinion that there are no different Gods, but there is only one God and you can call him Buda, Jesus Christ or whatever…
Yeah, that’s right! It’s the thing that created all of us. And as I said before in Hibru they say that all the rivers go into one sea. Every river has its own way, but the final point is the same. In the end all of them become one. And I admire all these rivers, I want to know – it’s very interesting for me – this way to go to the sea and that way to go to the sea. That’s what I
like to do. And I like to express it in music. I love Buda very much by the way. Yesterday one of the fans came to me, a girl, and she said to me, “usually I listen to jazz music. When I listen to Orphaned Land I try to think what can be the description for it and your music is Buda metal.” Buda metal! That’s what she said yesterday. And I told her, “You know what? We play Buda metal!” And I wrote on the sleeve of the t-shirt “Buda metal”! Because we make Buda metal, if one catholic guy sees that I look like Jesus Christ, it will be a catholic metal, if another guy considers it black or satanic metal – then it will be black or satanic metal. So here everybody is right. And how would you define the style of your music?
A tango between God and Satan. This is how I like to call it. I also write a book these days and this is the name of the book, “The Tango Between God and Satan”. It also goes into my life story. Into my personal life. It’s always like this – tango between God and Satan – when I travel around the world, I write down my personal experience from my childhood, from nowadays, I describe my time within the band.
And describe your books in a few words, because I doubt that it would be translated into Russian…
Well, it’s a kind of biography, but not quite. It’s more like my personal diary – from my childhood, it could be relationships that I had with women, some celestial love, true love that I met and stuff like that. It could go to a sleazy story like two rock’n’roll girls fighting because of me, so I can be very sleazy (laughs), I can be very romantic on the stories. I have a lot of stories. I have a story recorded myself singing prayer of the Muslims “Allah Akbar” in Taj Mahal in India and I was arrested by the police. It’s a fact of story and then in the end I got some kind of enlightenment and the end of the story is amazing. I won’t tell you, I’ll leave it to you – maybe you’ll read it one day. So I have even stories from India. The is a story that I recorded for the album “Mabool”. There’s on “mabool” three thunders and I have a complete story about one of these thunders. It’s like a story of… I don’t know. It’s supernatural. It’s like science fiction. But it happened. So by this book you get into my soul, into my journey, my life, my adve
ntures – here I’m a writer, not a journalist writes a story about me, I write it myself. So this is a biography in a way. I never thought of writing a roman, a novel – I never even knew that I’m able to write a book. I was telling these stories of mine to my friends all the time and all the time they came up to me and said, “You must write a book! You MUST!” I would have told you the stories, but I’ll ruin the magic of the book. You’ll better read it, so I won’t do that. So makw sure you’ll read the book! (laughs)Let’s return to the music then. Your first full-length “Sahara” (1994) album was considered by many fans as some kind of reply to Paradise Lost. What is your attitude to this band now? Their style‘s changed greatly since then…
We did a tour with Oaradise Lost in 2005 and we are very good friends. We got drunk together many times and had some great shows together. I like the music that they make – both the old stuff and the new stuff. I think that a band should develop. And even if they sound different- it’s o’k by me. They have their album “Gothic” – and they shouldn’t do another “Gothic”, they shoul do something else i
n order not to repeat themselves. We grow, we develop and I don’t look like I did when I was a kid; I don’t think the same, I think differently and I see the world in a different way. So the music should develop as well. And I like it. And speaking about the line-up of the band. It didn’t change dramatically since the beginning I’d say. Don’t you get tired of each other?
If we are on tour we get very much tired of each other. I’d say more – we want to kill each other. Imagine yourself living one month with this group in a bus!
Yes, but you seem very united!
We ARE united, we’re like a big whole. We like to sing together, we like to laugh at each other, You know we grew together since we were children. So we are very much united, but at the end of the day you hate the people that you love the most – it can be you boyfriend, you parents or your friends. You spend 24 hours a day in a bus and you want to kill them! You want to have your space sometimes you know. And when you’re in a bus your only space is a piece of bed. So that’s why we sometimes want to kill each other. Sometimes we can really f
ight and like scream at each other. And this is one step from killing each other. But so far we survive – it’s 17 years almost, but living on the road is very difficult. And when we come home, we rest from each other, because it’s not all the time that we’re on tours – sometimes we may not see each other for a month and a half – just everybody has a right to do his own things. When we have a show we just come together again.Many people think and I join them in their opinion that your album “Mabool” would sound perfect with some orchestra arrangements. Did such ideas occur to you – maybe it’d be worth trying to play with symphonic orchestra?
Didn’t think of it so far, but definitely this could work out and be great idea. Many people also told us that it sounds like a soundtrack of some movie. So maybe we should do it in the future. I think that for “Mabool” it would be definitely perfect if we had some philharmonic behind us. Why not. Tell them to call me (laughs) I agree!
Do the members of Orphaned Land have any side-projects?
No, I’m the only one. Sometimes I do vocals for side-projects and I
also have gothic, dark 80-s gothic side-project which is all about love songs and my heart is broken and things like that, but it’s my friend’s project and I’m not involved in it in a conceptual way (not a permanent member – ed.) We didn’t perform even yet, we just make some recording in the studio. We don’t even have a studio album. But I think in the future there will be a studio album. For me it’s great, because I can reflect my vocals and singing into another way – clean vocals, very low, very dark – the dark 80-s – The Sisters Of Mercy and Depeche Mode. What do you like more or what is easier for you to sing – growling or singing clean vocals?
I can sing everything – I can sing like an opera singer, I can sing gothic, I can sing oriental, I can sing growls and clean vocals – and the most difficult thing is to combine between them all. Sometimes in the growl it’s very difficult for me to keep the clean vocals.
Could you imagine your life without Orphaned Land? What does this band mean to you?
I had 6 years without Orphaned Land before we did “Mabool” and I had 6 years without it – and I’m
lucky that I’m not drug addicted, because those were really bad years. I don’t know – Orphaned Land is really the reason that I was born – in a matter of myself, beside having a family and stuff like that. The Orphaned Land is a reason for my life. If you had a wish which would fulfill any way, what would you ask for? Or for whom would you ask maybe?
Any wish?
Yes, anything!
I would want every living being on earth to be able to find the warrior of light within him. Because if it happen, then it will mean that the heaven on earth has settled. This is my biggest wish and that’s why I make music and began sing to people. And the other wish that I want for myself is to get married and to have a family. And I still didn’t find the woman that will be able to understand my complicated character…
Is it really so complicated?
Yes, probably it is. I’m a nice guy, but probably I’m not the ordinary. I’m a tree, but not the ordinary one.
How did you decide to play this kind of music? I think not many bands in Israel play such kind of music.
We decided to be a complete reflection of what it is to be an Israeli. By all means. So this is my short answer – I could go on and talk and talk and talk about it. Yes, this is true that sometimes bands in Israel play Norwegian black metal which is something which I don’t want to do, but I respect it if they want to do it. I thin that I would never do it better, than Norwegians. But they can do whatever they want and I think you should take advantage from the place you live in. I think that if even Russian bands took advantage from the Russian history – this would be something that I would listen to – for sure.
Kobi, tell me about the shooting of the clip for the song “Ocean Land”. Did you really shoot it under the water?
Oh nooo!! (laughs) It was terrible. Listen! For one day I was a fish! It started in the sea where they shot me as if I was drowning or something and the sea was full of poisonous fish, it was just full. And we were in the middle of it. And the poison was all over – it’s like the water of the poison of the fish. And my body was covered with this poison. It was very hard and the sea was very tricky,
very stormy. And the guys who were filming told me, “Play like you are drowning!” I said, “I’m really drowning!!” You didn’t have to play! (everybody laughs)
Yeah! This was the first half of the clip which was in the sea. Then the second part we shot at some friend’s swimming pool. And with special light we created the atmosphere of the sea. So I had to go under water and open my mouth and start to sing. They just did a test – they told me, “O’k. Let’s see how it is. Go under the water and say something.” I just did it one time and a swallowed so many water and I came out of it and I told them, “Listen. We can forget about it. We can do something out of the water. I don’t want to do this.” But the girl that appears in the clip – she is a good friend and she took me to a conversation. She is an actress in the theatre and she told me, “Listen. If you are an actor you must create every environment as your natural environment. If you do it – you are an actor.” So I overcame this and I did it in the end. I drank maybe ten liters of swimming pool water, but I did it in the end! It was very difficult. I was all under the water, we spent
there all day. Even Matti (Svatitzki – guitars – ed.) plays guitar solos under the water. We took one hundred dollar guitar and destroyed it under the water. He just played solo in the water. And all the cameras were under the water?
Yes, all of them were under the water. No effects, everything was completely true. I was a fish!
I think it was one of the trickiest and most terrible clips you ever did – in terms of the shooting process!
Oh! I would never do such a clip – no, no, no more. It was a nightmare.
I know that the first edition of “Mabool” contained some bonus disc with an acoustic show. Do you often play such acoustic show or was it just a casual show?
That show with “Mabool” was the first time we did it. It was 2002. And we did maybe 8 shows like this. Sometimes people want us to do acoustic shows and they really buy our acoustic shows. But we did it only 8 times. We like to do it sometimes, because for a change we come on stage and sit on the chairs. We are dressed in white – interesting. It’s very interesting I think.
Can w
e hope that one day we’ll see a full-length DVD from Orphaned Land with some bonus tracks or maybe some extra material?For sure! This is in our plan and I hope to do it after the next album. For sure there will be a live DVD, we have a lot of material and we have a location where we want to film it – it’s a Roman theatre in Israel. The DVD will be probably split on two parts – on acoustic show and then metal show.
What ethnic instruments do you use in your music? Do all of them belong to your culture or you look for some interesting instruments in different cultures?
They are Middle Eastern. And I think some of them come even from the area of Morocco. But it’s all related to Arabic music or Middle Eastern music. The thing is that Jewish people were spread all over the world for 2000 years and simply but surprisingly managed to save Buddhism and no more. So it’s very difficult for me to say what the Jewish music is. I don’t know. But we use everything that we hear around us. We also use Latin and Gregorian elements in a way. We try to use everything that we receive. We doubt even a question if it is from here o
r from there. Just we try to be a mirror of what we see. Are you a vegetarian?
No! But why?
In train you ordered some vegetarian pizza, so I thought you are a vegetarian…
Oh! I see. No I’m not a vegetarian. And what I asked was – I don’t eat pork and I don’t mix meat with cheese. I’m not that organized and crazy about it and if sometimes it happens, I eat it. But I prefer not to mix them. I think it’s a kind of tradition. And in pizza they often have salami and of course cheese, so I prefer to order vegetarian pizza. And this is the only reasin why I asked vegetarian. But hey, I love meat. I like chicken, for example. And my favourite dinner is to go out with a partner - recommended to be female (laughs) – to have a stake and red wine and potatoes. When I was in India I had three weeks without meat. Nothing! And I didn’t realize how I’m addicted to meat until these three weeks. After three weeks we found one place with meat in another place of India, which was more Muslim, so the eating meat was quite o’k there. Because Indians don’t eat meat. The cow is holy. When we found this place we started to scream. The noises that we made were the noises of dragon. (everybody laughs) So, NOT! I’m not vegetarian!
Who worked out the cover of “Mabool”? Was it created purposefully for the album or did you just find the picture that fitted your concept?
The story of the cover is influenced by two painting of William Joseph Turner. He represented in the 19th century two paintings: the first one was “The Evening Of The Deluge” where he tried to reflect darkness and shades. The other one was “The Morning after the Deluge” where he tried to reflect colors and light. Again it’s the perfect thing for Orphaned land – the darkness, the light, the contrast, the dissonance of both things. So this was the inspiration. I sent it to the graphic designer and I told him that I want to have something on the basis of this. When I sent it to the record company, they didn’t agree to use it, because they didn’t know what were the terms of copyrights. I said, “o’k”. We’ll create something. I sent them both to the designer and a told him, “This is your inspiration”. I explained the whole concept. And the first thing he sent me was the cover.
Finally what would you like to say to Darkside.ru readers. To your fans in Russia?
First of all I’d like to say that we were honored to meet them and to drink with them vodka. We were very happy to play for them, it was one of the most amazing trips that we had. Even the band members told us – that out of 25 countries that we saw, Russia is among the top three.
And the other two?
For every member they would differ. For me it’s Turkey – soon we’ll go there for the tenth time. We have lots of fans there, because of the oriental melodies that we have in our music. And our music is very similar to theirs. It’s a Muslim country, but it’s democracy. You can see in the street a homosexual and orthodox Muslim women for example and a metal guy. They just walk in the street. It’s very rare, you don’t see it very often and in many other place. So Turkey is a very special place I think. We have a complete movie, a documentary that was filmed in Turkey. So I would say Turkey, USA and Russia.
Interview by Ksenia "Wolfin" Khorina
3 èþë 2008
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