Zaher Zorgatti

Photo by Ami Bornstein

Israeli guitarist, producer, composer, arranger YOSSI SASSI and his YOSSI SASSI BAND are set to release their third album “Roots and Roads” on May 25th. Its genre can be described as Oriental Prog Metal, combining Yossi’s various musical roots – east and west, acoustic and electric, oriental and metal.

The band has now unveiled the first single from the upcoming album “Roots and Roads”, entitled “The Religion of Music”, featuring Zaher Zorgatti (Myrath) on vocals.

Video Line-up:
Zaher Zorgatti – Vocals
Yossi Sassi – Vocals, Guitars (Electric, Acoustic, 7-Strings), Bouzoukitara
Or Lubianiker – Electric Bass
Shay Ifrah – Drums
Roei Fridman – Percussion
Yoav Efron – Keyboards
Ariel Qassis – Kanun
Itzhak Ventura – Ney
Assaf Perelmuter – Diddley bow

Stream “The Religion of Music” here:

The final sound of the album is the reflection of an intricate combination of rock, classical and worldwide oriental instruments: Flute, Clarinet, Violin, Bozuouki, Oud, Saz, Charango, Chumbush, Ney, Kanun and much more. Alongside well-renowned local (Israeli) guest musicians, the album includes vocals by Zaher Zorgatti (Myrath) and guitar tunes by Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal (ex-Guns’n’Roses).

The album was recorded in the Jaffa Sound Arts studio in the ancient city port of Jaffa, Israel, during April 2016.

Watch below The making of “Roots and Roads” | Behind the scenes video:

Pre-order “Roots and Roads” here: http://bit.ly/ROOTSandRoads-PreOrder

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“The Religion of Music” Lyrics:

We are all traveling trees
Roaming the lands of nature
Doing our best to live simple lives
To grow our roots and prosper
But when you cut the trees you don’t like
There’ll be no place for you too

There’s a flame burning all
It won’t stop till all trees fall
There’s no us and them, no right and no wrong
You’re a tree just like me
So don’t cut me down…

History just keeps repeating,
There’s nothing new under the sun
Pain is pain, sorrow is sorrow,
No matter where your tree comes from.
When it burns, it burns the same
Can’t you see it’s the same old flame?
It keeps repeating, it’s never ending
It just changes its name.

But when you cut the trees you don’t like
There’ll be no place for you too…

YossiSassi-cover

Interview By Alison Booth

Pioneers of oriental metal, Tunisian metallers MYRATH, have just unleashed their highly anticipated fourth album “Legacy”. The band are currently supporting New Jersey prog metallers SYMPHONY X on their “Underworld Europe Tour 2016”, along with MELTED SPACE.

MYRATH, Sheffield 2016

On the third date of the UK run, at the Corporation in Sheffield on 15th February, Senior Manager Alison Booth managed to have a quick catch up with vocalist Zaher Zorgatti during the mayhem backstage, before the band had to leave. We discussed how the band are settling into the tour and of course the new album, including the reasons for the long gap since releasing “Tales Of The Sands”. You can read some excerpts from the chat below and listen to the full interview on the audio player:

Discussing the tour, Zaher stated:

“We used to be a cover band of Symphony X, so you can imagine how it’s wonderful to play, to share the stage with them. Finally we did it, so that’s cool and finally we met our fans, our new fans, because there are a lot of people that discovered us through these three concerts and for sure there will be more and more and more and more and more at the next few concerts in Great Britain!”

On “Legacy”, Zaher revealed:

“We compose from the heart, it’s not mechanical. Maybe that’s why it took us many years, because we passed through many difficult moments, like the death of our godfather, Malek’s father. It was a shock, he was such an inspiration for us and he was our manager. I can tell you, without him and without Kevin Codfert our producer, we could do nothing, I would not be talking to you now.

Then came the revolution in Tunisia, so it has negative and positive sides. Then we wrote the album and completed everything in my home town of Sousse in Tunisia. Then we moved to France and recorded in Paris and it was mixed there by Kevin Codfert. He went to Sweden to Jens Bogren, he loved the material, he fell in love with ‘this kebab metal’ [Laughs]”.

We are excited to play the album in complete on a headlining tour. I think we will have another tour, for sure a French tour and then a European tour as a headliner. We will do another tour with a bigger band. We are writing the next album, we already have five songs ready.

The most important things for us is composing and making albums, because we are full of inspiration and full of energy. We’re still young and I think we brought something new to the metal scene that nobody brought before. There are many bands who use these kind of minor scales in their music, just to say ‘this is oriental’, but where I come from this is oriental clichés – everybody does like (sings) Cleopatra or pyramids Hollywood movies.“