Interview: Orob
Pictured: Orob; Photo By: Minh Tung Nguyen
Hailing from Toulouse, France, Orob is a progressive black metal band that is shaping a furious, dark, and weighty approach to the genre. Their latest EP titled Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow is a fantastic work released in 2025.
We are honored to have the opportunity to interview Thomas from the band, discussing the band’s recent work, their ethos, and what we can expect in the future. Enjoy the conversation!
First off, it’s a pleasure getting to interview you guys! To start us off, I always like to have you share a little bit about where you come from and who you are at a high level. You are from Toulouse, France. Right?
Thanks for having us on Blacforje! And that’s right, we’re from Toulouse and we always come back there. Some of us had to move across France because of work, but it’s still our hometown. We rehearse here, we have a lot of friends here, and at our modest scale, we’re part of the local scene since 10+ years now.
You guys recently released your album titled Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow in November. Is that the first full-length record for Orob thus far?
The album is meaty and songs are quite long and intricate, yet it’s more an EP than a full length. Before that we released a full album in 2021, as well as an EP and a demo. So, there are quite a lot of Orob songs out there, but only one real LP called Aube Noir.
Can you tell us a little bit about the themes of the album and what inspired it?
Even though we coat them in mysticism and poetry, our songs always revolve around a handful of themes: our disgust for domination, existential dread, and a deep sense of weltschmerz.
Our first LP, Aube Noir, tackled it in a very philosophical way. We built a dense story, centered around nature and our impossibility as humans of respecting what is smaller than us. It was a cold and distant approach from the actual subject - real world matters buried under layers of lore and art. In a way it reflects who we were when we wrote it around 2015/2016 – younger, thinking a lot, very much inspired by our readings on hunter-gatherer societies and ecology.
Written in 2024, Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow is a product of its time. The world is in a dire state, we’re tired, we’re angry. Tired of the grey dullness that is offered to us as the only path - a boring work in a system that destroys people and the world around us, giving us amoral idols of power and wealth that we should envy. Anger fuels our creation. We create to find our own light when there’s none left.
France seems to have a growing scene in black metal and progressive metal in general. Do you guys see that too, or is that just an observation I’m conjuring in my own head?
I reckon the work of torch bearers such as Blut Aus Nord or the Great Old Ones are paving the way for a lot of newer, smaller bands that want to create something unique. We’re not as focused on the recent releases as we did before, but sometimes we stumble on a stunner, like the album Portraits from French post-black Aodon. That one was on repeat on our side. Joining forces with Nantes based label L’Ordalie Noire made us look into their roster of excellent bands and projects such as Gứŕū, Owls and Initiation,got us hooked. There’s too much good releases around and too few hours.
I'd like to add that France has a lot of new talents, but we also benefit from cult bands that are here since the 80s or 90s. Not all are well known abroad, but bands such as S.U.P or Argile are more than solid foundations. They are still vivid inspirations for us.
I love how your Bandcamp describes you as “progressive black metal.” It seems that the umbrella of black metal has blossomed into so many subgenres in the past decade. We have atmospheric black metal, raw black metal, blackgaze, Viking metal, and so many other variants. When you think of progressive black metal, can you describe what you believe that means and what makes it so unique?
For us, “progressive black metal” means a more elaborate, structurally complex form of black metal than what is done by more orthodox bands such as, let’s say, Darkthrone or Dark Funeral - black metal that allows itself to go beyond the codes of the genre. We’re huge Enslaved fans, and we borrow from them the very narrative and freeform structures of their songs. I also think of Ihsahn, <Code>, or Klabautamann - bands that are daring yet not totally into experimental territories.
The line between prog, avant-garde and every shade of “post” is often very debatable. So, whatever feels right to the listener is the right classification, I guess. In a genre deeply rooted in rebellion yet heavily codified such as black metal, it's important for us to have some different voices exploring freely the margins of the style. Bands such as Arcturus, Dodheimsgard, or more recently Voices changed our ways of conceiving extreme metal (and music) forever, adding more shades to it.
‘Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow’ by Orob
I know many artists like their anonymity, and we will respect your level of comfort sharing about you all personally as artists. But I do have to ask about you as individuals and as people, as that always impacts the music. Can you tell us a little bit about the band, how you guys connected, and who you are in a larger sense?
We all got day jobs in various industries, yet we take music seriously. Since Pierre-Henry (bass) and I (guitar/vocals) met during university 15 years ago, we’ve been close friends and never ceased to write music together. In 2023, we were joined by Baptiste (guitars) and Vincent (drums) from the band Opprobre (excellent post/prog black metal). I bring most the of composition ideas and structures, yet everyone can discuss, modify, or add to the tracks. Bass always has been done by Pierre-Henry, and we’re integrating more and more riffs and ideas from Baptiste and Vincent. It’s an open discussion. It is fun that way. On the latest record Vincent decided to ditch entirely the alt-rock inspired drums parts I demoed on a lot of riffs and created the brilliant, dynamic parts we now have on the album. It shifted the whole record to a more aggressive sound. It’s just better that way.
In the same vein, the electronic track called “Meditation on Hope” was created by Pierre-Henry, it was supposed to be very short, but he came out with a full song. We liked it. We asked ourselves if it wasn't too much of a strange choice for a short blackened prog post-punk EP, but we decided to go for it. In the end it made sense in the story we tell.
On the side, we have a lot of other projects. I already cited Opprobre. Baptiste leads a very cool shoegaze/blackgaze project called Soaring, and Pierre-Henry is leading the electronica/post-punk band Torrens (which I joined too). Of course, being cursed with being an excellent drummer, Vincent plays in all of those.
We really love philosophy and spirituality here at Blacforje, and we value the positive impact such areas have on the human spirit. Do you all consider yourselves spiritual or philosophical both as people and in your music?
Philosophy is important to us, but we are not spiritual people. Ghosts, gods, and angels exist in our lyrics as metaphorical vessels for real world concepts. We like telling stories, we like allegories and symbolism, but we are materialists in the political and philosophical sense. There’s a beauty in knowing your acts are yours alone.
Existence can be strange and full of hardships, of uncomfortable questions, and creation is an act of rebellion - these are the concepts we explore in this record. Here to create beauty in troubled times, yet mere fossils of future silts.
So, do you anticipate more music in the future? What is the plan with Orob moving forward?
Golden Tears of Love and Sorrow was written in 2024, just after Baptiste and Vincent joined the band. So, we wanted to learn to write together on a dense and short release before scaling up to more ambitious grounds. It turns out the process with the current line-up is smoother than it’s ever been. We’re confidently starting to write a new LP. For now, it’s a lot of exploration, and we’re very busy organizing our touring agenda to support the EP we just released. But we can’t wait to be fully focused on writing again.
In the meantime, should you want to listen to more Orob, our LP Aube Noir is out there and so is our older EP called Into the Room of perpetual echoes. We’re still very proud of these songs to this day.
I like to end all interviews on a lighter note with a random question. If you guys had to share the one café in Toulouse, France where you can find the best coffee and espresso, where would you recommend?
We recommend L’Astronef, a small café/bar from a popular district. It’s a warm place. Sometimes they do concerts. We regularly end-up there after rehearsals. See you there on your trip to (hopefully) sunny south of France.
