The '90s.
Being a metalhead in the Middle East was an amazing experience. We formed Orphaned Land in 1991, right in the same year of the Gulf War, and the opener of the album Sahara, "The Sahara's Storm", both lyrically and musically was a pure reflection of the birth of the new founded Oriental Metal genre.

Living in a terror, bleeding zone, full of weapons, bloodsheds and conflicts made metal to be a perfect naturally match to our characters. On the one hand, it seemed like it was impossible to find a more "metallic" place in the world than the Middle East, on the other hand, we felt like we are in an unknown forgotten landscape. Everyone was familiar with bands from the USA, UK, Germany, Sweden and even Sepultura from Brazil. Israel, not to mention the whole Middle East, was and still is out of the touring route of 99% of the scene bands (today there are many shows in Israel, and just a few only in Lebanon and Dubai).

At the beginning we wanted to sound like At The Gates, Morbid Angel, Death, Deicide. But very fast we reached the conclusion that we are from a different place, a place with different temperature, culture and colours, that is also the source of all the monotheistic beliefs. Straight from the first moment when our lyrics, in combination with usage of folk-rhythms, instruments and motives, started to focus on our region's political and religious problems, we felt that we've created a new genre in the metal scene: Oriental Metal. With Oriental Metal we felt and still feel that we are making the worldwide metal scene wider, richer and bigger.

We had to do everything by ourselves back then, the studios, the sound technique - no one knew what is metal or how to record and mix it. Therefore the sound and production sometimes might appear rough on our first two albums, but yet they are underground diamonds to many metalheads. Holy Records were the first ones to discover us, giving us a chance and a recording budget. Suddenly we found ourselves sitting in a studio and recording a 70 years old blind man who was playing the kannun, in order to investigate the roots we wanted to combine with our metal. We found ourselves sitting with Iron Maiden and Slayer t-shirts inside synagogues and while the old fallas were singing and chanting, we were recording them with hidden tapes. That was an amazing feeling, a feeling like we have found a meaning in our strange lifes. We felt we are doing something important, we found our destiny in this life.

Everything was fascinating back in these days. While most bands were using skulls, swords, blood and more, we've decided to use a photo of a mosque on our album front cover, we've decided to use both Hebrew and Arabic along with English. We've decided to play and sing with quarter tones while the west is working only with half tones. We've decided to be the flag of the Middle Eastern metal heads, even though many of them are living in so called "enemy countries". Today we can say that we have a huge movement of fans from the Middle East.

Both Sahara & El Norra Alila are milestones of Oriental Metal. In our 25 years career, they are the first two sons of many more yet to come of Oriental Metal - they are our childhood bravery albums.

Long live Oriental Metal!

We would like to dedicate these albums to all the metalheads hailing from all over the Middle East.

We are all one.

Kobi Farhi / Orphaned Land