Band:	Myrath
Album:	Tales Of The Sands
Style:	Oriental folk metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	September 26, 2011
Guest review by:	Mindheist

01. Under Siege
02. Braving The Seas
03. Merciless Times
04. Tales Of The Sands
05. Sour Sigh
06. Dawn Within
07. Wide Shut
08. Requiem For A Goodbye
09. Beyond The Stars
10. Time To Grow
11. Apostrophe For A Legend [Nightmare Records bonus]
12. Fate In Motion [Spiritual Beast Records bonus]

On September, 26th 2011, as dusk drew nigh, a girl of ravishing beauty sat at the window watching darkness drown her grief-stricken city in autumnal grace. The divine elegance of the fading eventide rendered her speechless, gazing with an ogling reverence at the last glints of the setting sun as it slowly oozed its way behind the cutting crusts of the Atlas Mountains. She was eagerly waiting for God to finish painting his masterpiece; for the dark mist to enshroud Andalusia before she begins paging through what seemed to be an authorless book of tales that she's been cradling since morn. A book simply dubbed: Tales of the Sands.

The gripping artwork swathed her senses from within, surreptitiously slithering like blood into her soul, voluptuously catapulting her into the heart of the grassless meadow. Enthralled by the divine sight, she could now put into words what only demons, jinn and rogues could see, hear and touch. She was perching high on the spine of an elegant camel, ornamented with silken garments and dangling through the dead limbs of a silver birch tree. Her long frock trailed between her loyal companion's paws and the scorched gravel dust of the Grand Erg Oriental. Her silhouette grazed the edge of the rug-covered path that led to a secluded cloister nestling under the gray skies of September.

That seemingly uninhabited house was like none other. As sinister as it looked, it was mysteriously exhaling magical music through the breaches of its putrefying walls. It was like a sandstorm of pure pristine progressive metal raving along a chiseled pulse of technical shredding and an entrancing twist of oriental lure, with the ghosts of Dream Theater and (mainly) Symphony X sewing the background image. The ritual continued throughout ten gusts of wind, each different from the next, the longest being 05:25, marked by extensive use of keyboards and beautiful coalescence between violin, darbouka and tearful pianistic interludes. The more she approached the house, the more the music became crystalline; with the sound floating upon demolishing heavy mid-tempo riffs, dainty drumming and powerful vocals swirling between exhilarating English and heartening Arabic. She was transfixed, spellbound by the ethereal patterns and scents of Phoenicia, Andalusia and the Mediterranean Sea that soared like a rocket from the house to portray a picture worth a thousand words, a book enclosing three different cultures, a tale from the sands of Tunisia?

No longer able to rein her gut-wrenching curiosity, she pushed the door open and much to her surprise, the house wasn't uninhabited! Four silhouettes of young Carthaginians stood tall welcoming her into their third proud delivery. "Who are you?" she uttered. They responded: "We are the authors of the book you've been holding so dearly in your heart. It's a gift for all the fans around the globe and a symbol of eternal gratitude to the three hundred martyrs of the Tunisian revolution. We are Myrath, the sons of Carthage?"