Originally posted at Me, Myself,Music and Mysteries -May 2013
In Tunisia, Myrath (means Legacy or Legend), in the progressive rock world it means great prog-rock with a Tunisian flavor! Myrath was founded in 2001, by a then 13-year-old guitarist Malek Ben Arbia. The band changed musicians over the next several years and played mostly cover songs and gravitated towards progressive rock. In 2005 MYRATH released their first self-produced album Double Face.
In 2005 Malek Ben Arbia the band’s founder and guitarist traveled to Nancy – France and enrolled in the famous Guitar school, Music Academy International (M.A.I.) After graduating, Ben Arbia returned to Tunisia intending to pursue an international music career with MYRATH. At that time,experienced bass player Anis Jouini joined the band and the band had a line up that consisted of four skilled musicians! MYRATH spent the next three months or so writing new songs for the second album.
Their second album Hope was recorded in 2006, with Kevin Codfert as sound engineer and producer.The album was a turning point in the career of MYRATH. As a result of Kevin’s valuable assistance, and superb work, the band was signed by the French label Brennus Music who released “Hope” in September 2007.
Today I listened to the bands third album Tales of the Sands and I loved the sound and music of the band. I particularly enjoyed the title track!
The musicians on the album include:
Anis Jouini / Bass
Saif Ouhibi / Drums
Malek Ben Arbia / Guitars
Elyes Bouchoucha / Keyboards, Vocals
Zaher Zorgatti / Vocals
The album has a 4.07 rating at ProgArchives and is labeled as an excellent addition to any ProgRock collection!!
Reviewer at ProgArchives – Conner Fynes wrote this about the album back when it was released in 2011:
Over the past few months, the world’s eyes have been set on the Arab world, with breaths held in anticipation of the rapid political changes that are taking place. Myrath is a progressive outfit emerging from one of the region’s smaller nations, Tunisia. Being the first metal band in the country to ever reach a wider audience, Myrath (the Arabic word for ‘Legend’) have engaged audiences already with two albums of top-tier progressive metal, fusing Middle-Eastern traditional musical influences in with their brand of melodic metal, much as the more established band Orphaned Land does. With a unique mixture of sound, excellent songwriting, and great execution, Myrath’s ‘Tales Of The Sands’ is a fantastic album in its own right.
Being someone who was under the impression that exciting melodic prog metal died around the turn of the millennium under a blanket of Dream Theater clones, it has been a huge refreshment to hear a band that may be doing something similar to the legends of the genre, but are putting a validating new angle on their sound. Before listening to what Myrath had to offer, I was admittedly fighting a doubt that this could be a run-of-the-mill power metal band, using sounds of their homeland as a gimmick to pull in listeners, but as is fairly rare for my experience with metal music, I was proven wrong. While progressive power metal mixed with Arabic music sounds pretty much as one might expect, the Oriental sounds in the music are infused superbly in with the metal, not sounding contrived, but instead as a sincere element of the songwriting Continue Reading
So check them out, again as for me, I need to go back and listen to those first two albums….. Let’s go “Into the Night” with “Tales of the Sands” from Myrath…..