The story of Myrath reads like a script that Hollywood forgot to write. It begins in the ancient amphitheater of Carthage, Tunisia, and it was there, under the moniker Xtazy, that a young group of musicians found themselves opening for Robert Plant. That single night would alter the trajectory of heavy metal in North Africa forever.
“When we were still Xtazy, we opened for Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin at the Roman amphitheater in the capital, Tunis,” recalls vocalist Zaher Zorgati. “At that time, Robert Plant had a project called Strange Sensation, and Adagio and a band from Lebanon also played. Kevin Codfert, Adagio’s keyboardist, was backstage watching the opening bands, and at the end of our concert he came to us and said he liked our work but that the name Xtazy didn’t work, and that we should think of something original. That was how it all started.”
Speaking over a crackling phone line connecting Europe to the African continent, Zorgati’s voice carries the weight of nostalgia. The connection might be unstable, but the memories are crystal clear. “Malek’s [Ben Arbia, guitarist] father was our manager and spoke with Kevin about changing the name and what else we could improve,” Zorgati says. “I remember Kevin saying that what would distinguish us from other bands was our style and sound, because he had never heard something so fresh and original as what we were doing before.”
“I would say that we are still a progressive metal band, just not as much as in the past.”
That encounter forged a bond that remains unbroken to this day. Codfert took the band under his wing, producing their debut album Hope and becoming an integral part of their creative architecture. “When listening to our records you will notice an evolution,” Zorgati explains. “Some will like it, others won’t, and often they don’t like it because they are unconditional fans of the progressive genre. They realize that we are becoming commercial and that we bring changes in every record. However, we grew a lot with these changes and I would say that we are still a progressive metal band, just not as much as in the past.”
The band’s breakthrough moment arrived in 2011 with Tales of the Sands. The album garnered significant attention, including a nod from Kobi Farhi of Orphaned Land, who included the track “Merciless Times” on a Century Media compilation. While Zorgati admits this period marked a shift toward more mainstream structures, he insists it made the band “much stronger” without them ever having “lost their musical identity.”
That identity is defined by the seamless fusion of heavy metal muscle and traditional Tunisian instrumentation. When asked how they decide which ethnic instruments to weave into a song, Zorgati reveals a process that is surprisingly organic: “Believe me when I say that we don’t even think about it,” he assures us. “We are just a group of people who get together and experiment with ideas. For example, we might be experimenting with something and I suggest adding violins, and further ahead one of the other members, or even Kevin, decides to complement the song with a clarinet… Or someone is of the opinion that nothing should be added and that a certain part of the music should go like that, natural. After that there is a whole democratic process and the best idea receives more votes [laughs].”
However, making metal in Tunisia is not without its complications. Despite the country being hailed as a success story of the Arab Spring – boasting free elections and landmark political shifts – the cultural landscape remains a battleground. Zorgati is candid about the reality of being a metal musician in a nation where religious conservatism still holds sway: “You don’t have problems if you play concerts in your garage or if you play for a university audience, or something like that,” he notes. “However, if your goal is to give a big metal or rock concert, or even organize a festival, that is no longer possible.”
“The music we make is our religion
and what we believe in.”
He draws a sharp line between the era before and after the revolution: “Before the revolution there was no problem, but after that the parliament became divided into three parties and one of them is composed of Islamic radicals. They are people who have their own ideas and philosophies, but we do too. We are fighting for our ideals to prevail. The music we make is our religion and what we believe in.”
Zorgati contrasts his home with other nations in the region. “It is the same in Egypt and in any country that has an Islamic government. However, if you come to Tunisia, you realize that there are differences. Here I can go out to the street, have a few drinks and do what I want, because nobody is going to bother me. However, we want to create a movement and build something solid. We have freedom of expression and we are free to do what we want, the problem is that the government wants to control us, especially the younger ones, eliminating all kinds of activities that motivate a deviation from their ideology. We are trying to combat this political party through culture – music, theater, cinema and everything else. They want to take that away from us and we want to take them out of power.”
Cinema, fittingly, is in the band’s blood. Their video for “Dance” is a cinematic marvel, following in the footsteps of “Believer” from the Legacy album. For Zorgati, stepping in front of the camera is second nature: “For me it is not difficult at all to be in a studio playing a role,” he says. “My father was an actor and was in theater plays, and my grandfather was responsible for a theater company in the place where we lived, so, as you can understand, it is something that is already part of me.” For his bandmates, however, the learning curve was steeper: “For the other musicians it was more complicated, especially in the recordings of ‘Believer’. With ‘Dance’, since they already had experience, it was easier,” he explains. “The scenario was just a green background, with no other element, and we had to imagine everything that was happening, as if we were really making a movie in Hollywood. We didn’t have plants, snakes, nothing. In the video, 80% of the images were captured with a green background and the other 20% in Tunisia, like the scene with the horse, for example. It was difficult to imagine things happening around us and having to act at the same time, while the director gave instructions and said ‘go there, now go here, imagine this is happening’. We recorded two videos in three days, from nine in the morning to four in the morning of the next day.”
Despite becoming global ambassadors for Oriental metal, Zorgati remains grounded about the challenges of emerging from North Africa: “We went through a hard time. Tunisia does not offer the same platforms,” he admits. “We had to sacrifice a lot of things and we have to strive much more to manage to achieve the same as a band from the United States or Europe. It is something difficult for an African band… You have people who don’t even know how to indicate on a map where Tunisia is.”
Despite the thorny path, Zorgati views this as merely the opening chapter: “This is just the beginning,” he insists. “We are building something new together with our label. earMUSIC and Edel are not just labels; they really like the music and the fact that we bring a whole new style to the audience. I know that some of our fans were disappointed, I am aware of that, because we are no longer as progressive a band as we used to be, but we are here, standing. I want, however, to mention this: we don’t listen to commercial music. We listen to underground bands, djent, prog, old records, new material from emerging bands… We listen to all kinds of metal. Now we are a commercial band, as many people tell us, and I accept that, but on this question of being commercial it is like this example of a hamburger: you have McDonald’s which is very commercial and then you have Five Guys, from Chicago. They are both commercial but the food from McDonald’s has no soul and the one from Five Guys does. You take a bite of a juicy hamburger and you realize that there is soul there, that it is food made with love. The same happens with our music, which is made with love.”
Disclaimer: Parts of this article are reproduced for archival context from an original interview conducted by Joel Costa for Ultraje Magazine (Issue 21, April–May 2019), the final print edition of the magazine. The perspectives and quotes reflect that specific period and context.
