Tales of the Sands

Guitarist Malek Ben Arbia founded this band in 2001, at thirteen, as X-Tazy. Renamed Myrath, it was the first Tunisian act signed to a label outside the country. The name is Arabic for legacy, and the music sets Middle Eastern instruments and scales inside the structures of power metal and progressive rock -- what the band itself calls blazing desert metal. Kevin Codfert produced, as he had since Hope in 2007. The core of the band in this period is the voice of Zaher Zorgati, who joined that year and moves between the phrasing of Islamic chant and a metal singer's reach inside a single line; the words turned toward Tunisian folklore with him. Where Desert Call in 2010 was talked about alongside Orphaned Land, this record leans harder on orchestration and strings, and the songs are built on a larger scale. The run from "Under Siege" through "Braving the Seas" and "Merciless Times" lays out sand, sea and time as its subjects, with the title track at the centre. The order here is the ten-track European pressing; the American and Japanese editions (KICP 1601) carry eleven, and from the 2018 reissue it runs to twelve with "Apostrophe for a Legend" and "Fate in Motion" -- the twelve-track version is what the player holds.