Intervista Orphaned Land (Chen Balbus)

Puoi leggere l’intervista in italiano nella prima pagina

Hi Chen, how are you doing?

I’m good, how are you?

I’m good, thanks! Let’s start talking about “Unsung Prophets & Dead Messiahs”: this new album has been released 5 years after “All is One”, why did it take such a long time?

Oh, that’s a good question!
Personally I wanted to bring this album out two years after “All is One”, but as I was talking to Kobi I was very eager, I was impatient – you know, I’m young so it’s appropriate to my age – but he said that the good stuff must wait, we shouldn’t just release an album to release an album, we want to make it as perfect as possible; we took the time, we had the resources, we took all the time necessary to be sure that it would be nothing less of a masterpiece.

This new album has been received with an incredible enthusiasm by the critics: album of the month for many magazines, on some you ranked higher than Saxon, Black Label Society, Machine Head and others, were you expecting such a great success?

[Laughs] Honestly, I really believed in the concept of the album and in the music itself, but I was never expecting to top any of the big bands!
But I’m glad we did top them, it means we really did something good!

With the last album you had just joined the band, now the lineup has been stable for some year, after Yossi has been replaced by Idan, is the songwriting process changed between then and now?

Actually not much in particular, in “All is One” the songwriting was without Yossi, he was on tour and we were doing the same thing in my home studio, just recording demos, sending them out in emails and stuff like that.
The new addition to the band, which is Idan, has allowed us much more time, and he of course has his own professional recording studio, so that allows us to take our time, record as many stuff as we can, much more room to vary around.

A few years ago you toured extensively with Blind Guardian, and I know you are also personal friends of them, do you think being close to them for so long influenced your new music? “Chains Fall to Gravity” in particular reminded me of them…

I would say you’re right.
I was never much into Blind Guardian, I always knew about them, I heard the music, but I never got into them as much as I got into them after I saw their shows being with them on tour.
You know that the people are gold, they have golden hearths, it makes you like the band even more when you know what kind of people they are.
After seeing their shows I was really amazed, I saw that this kind of genre could work for us well, so I took a bit of influence from them after those lives.

‎A thing that many old fans really appreciated is the comeback of the growl, after you had just clean singing on All is One. Why did you decide to bring it back?

Actually the idea to lay down the growl on “All is One” was…it was the idea first, but then we had just one song with the growl, it was not intended, but when we write the songs we put in what we think fits the lyrics, the music.
For example, if you have such an angry and depressive riff going around you can’t put some “La la la” [laughs], you want growl there, it’s essential!
That’s basically what brought it back, the lyrics are very angry and the growl are very fitting to the music.

‎You have some excellent guests, Hansi (Blind Guardian), Tompa (At the Gates) and Steve Hackett (ex-Genesis), how did you manage to involve all of them?

They are all different stories [laughs].
Hansi, of course, became a great friend of ours after that tour and we figured out he would be a hero in our story, he sings “Like Orpheus”, Orpheus is a mythological singer who sung to the earth and amazed everyone with his voice, so in our story he’s like Orpheus, he’s singing like him.
As for Steve Hackett, Kobi was singing on his album and he asked Kobi, “Would you like to have money or a guest appearance?” and Kobi, of course, took the obvious choice as we know now [laughs].
It’s better to have a piece of history than to have money to buy stuff.
And, of course, Thomas Lindberg served as the antagonist in the story; we were always big fans of At the Gates, I personally love them, he’s voice is one of a kind, he led a generation of Melodic Death Metal, so we figured out his voice would be perfect as the voice of the antagonist

How was working with them? Did you give them very detailed instructions on what to do, or did you just leave their parts for them to decide what to do?

For Hansi and Thomas we pretty much had the vocal ideas pretty much nailed down, so we told them to do as they liked around our idea.
As for Steve Hackett he just rolled around what happened and that was his magic, we didn’t even tell him what to do, we would have used any solo of him [laughs].

‎To an international audience, or an audience of metalheads, those are surely the most interesting guests, but to those accustomed to Israeli music another name that stands out is Jehuda Poliker. He worked with you also in the previous album, how did you end up working with him?

The lucky thing about Orphaned Land and Israel is that Israel is incredibly small and everyone knows everyone in the music business and he really liked the idea of us working together.
First we played together two of his songs that we did a metal version of, then he agreed to write some songs for us, and that was magic!

With Trump becoming president the situation in Israel became more tense, I’m thinking for example of his recent move of moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, has is presidency influenced the direction you went with the new music and lyrics?

That’s one of the many, many reasons for the musical direction, really one of many reasons, but I wouldn’t say he really changed a lot, he’s only thrown a match into an already lit fire.
So it’s not that different, it’s still the same.

‎Your lyrics are very political and, to some people, they may offer a different point of view showing a side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict they didn’t consider: have you ever been approached by fans you changed their ideas thanks to your music?

Actually more than one, it’s happening in many of our shows: you have that image when you’re standing on stage, suddenly you see a flag of Lebanon and a flag of Israel standing together and that’s an amazing sight that you get to see every time.
And people write to us messages, or comments on our page, that we changed the way they perceive the world and that’s for us is a great achievement, something that even big leaders can’t achieve.

Yeah, it’s pretty magical.

Indeed [laughs].

Talking about you, you are just a few years older than Orphaned Land’s first album and you were very young when you joined the band; how did you get in touch with them at first?

The funny story is that Kobi knows me since I was using diapers [laughs] a very true story, he used to hang out with my brother, they were in the same school, and back then, back in the ’90 the metal community was 20 to 30 people [laughs] and everyone knew each other, everyone was around, it was easy to recognise them with metal t-shirts.
Kobi was quite often at my family’s house, eventually I got older, I got into guitar, I was very influenced by Orphaned Land and started to send them my YouTube videos.
So, with him already knowing me, it was easier: one day he just called me and asked, “Do you want to be our new guitar player?” and I said “No…I’m kidding, of course I want to!” [laughs].
And that’s it, the rest is history.

Not long ago you formed a new band, The Secret Saint, which, if I recall correctly, debuted live supporting Guns N’ Roses in Tel Aviv…

Yeah, it was our debut.

How the hell did you manage to do that?

I seriously cannot believe it myself now that’s you’re saying that out loud! [Laughs]
I always wanted to have a Rock band because, being in Orphaned land is amazing, is fulfilling, but I’m a laid-back type of guy, I enjoy being funny, being easy, that’s my way, so I just did it for my own sake.
I was very persistent, I was calling the production day and night, day and night since January and eventually they told me that they sent out our material to the Guns N’ Roses management in Los Angeles and that they wanted us in.
Persistence can help sometimes.

You’ve announced quite a lot of shows and have a very tight schedule from February to April, then again some other in the summer festivals, are you planning to add more dates?

Oh yeah, we’re gonna have shows until one of us passes out, pretty much [laughs].
Once you have a new album you have to spread it out everywhere you can.
 

This was my last question, thank you for your time, Chen!

And thank you, this was a nice chat!

Davide Sciaky