I’m all about blatant publicity stunts to get the people talking – I mean it work’s for Lady GaGa – but does anyone else find this picture a little bit, well, weird?

To give you a bit of (essential) background, it’s the new promo shot for Israel’s Orphaned Land and their ‘Highly anticipated; fourth studio opus “The Never Ending Way Of ORwarriOR” in Europe.

Their new album turns out to be a sophisticated concept album taking Orphaned Land ’s unique brand of exotic, heavy music to soaring new heights in terms of complexity and catchiness. It is an audible manifest that the time has come for Middle Eastern metal to take over!

Vocalist Kobi Farhi comments on the album’s concept and the striking new promo photo as follows: “As people that were born into the tragedy of our region, we have always been devoted to creating harmony between conflicts, a musical heaven on earth, a tango between God & Satan.

“Even in the album’s artwork we combined Hebrew and Arabic, regardless of the fight between Jews and Muslims. I found a Jordanian guy, specialized in calligraphic artwork. He took letters from Hebrew and Arabic and moulded them in his art to create a symbol of peace. Same goes for our band photo, where we portrayed a synergy between the three monotheistic religions, that believe in the same God and yet, ridiculously have been killing each other for centuries “in the name of God” and turned the holy land into an orphaned land.

“Naturally we continued this idea of union on a musical level as well and the result is as always crazy, it’s a miracle – in our concerts: our Jewish fans sing in Arabic and our Muslim fans sing in Hebrew, brave friendships have spawned and our Middle Eastern metal music destroys all this political witchcraft we have been trapped in for so long. This is a musical journey of hope in lands of war, creating heaven on earth, building a new Jerusalem.”

I’ve got to hand it to them though, Orphaned Land is probably the only band from this country that has managed to succeed at building up a huge following among Muslims and Arabian people. These fans communicate freely via the band’s social networking pages, some of them even proudly bearing Orphaned Land, even though that puts them at huge risk in their home countries! The African musician Fela Kuti once said: “music is the weapon of the future” – Orphaned Land is the living proof of that!