Malek Ben Arbia — Tunisian guitarist — is a founder of Myrath and the author of much of the material that made the band the best known in Arab metal. Myrath was born in Tunisia in the early 2000s and took nearly a decade to find its definitive form. The formula, settled on Tales of the Sands (2011), combines progressive metal of European root with the scales, rhythms and instruments of the Maghreb — and it falls to the guitar to stitch the two together. That is a real technical problem. Arabic music's scales do not coincide with those of Western metal, and traditional phrases carry ornamentation the electric guitar does not reproduce naturally. Ben Arbia works at that seam: heavy riffs on a Western base, but with melodic shapes and phrasing that come from another tradition. The result is a sound not to be confused with any other in the genre. Seven records later — from Hope (2007) to Wilderness of Mirrors (2026) — Myrath stands as a demonstration that metal can absorb an entire musical tradition without turning it into decorative exoticism.
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