- Country: Tunisia
- Style: Progressive / oriental power metal
- Label: earMUSIC
- Release date: 27 March 2026
Strings and qraqeb first, guitars second. That ordering tells you most of what you need about how Wilderness of Mirrors is built. Keyboardist Kevin Codfert produced it, and Jacob Hansen mixed and mastered. The result is clean and wide, with strings and choirs pushed high, which suits the oriental melodies but leaves Malek Ben Arbia’s riffs sounding a step back more often than they should.
Structurally the album is front-loaded. “The Funeral” opens as one of the longer tracks and spends too long getting there, while “Breathing Near the Roar” does the same job in far less time and is the best-written thing here: tight verse, real lift, no wasted bars. “Until the End” with Elize Ryd is a polished single. The middle, “Still the Dawn Will Come” and “The Clown” especially, sags.
Zaher Zorgati is in superb voice throughout, and the last third, from “Edge of the Night” onwards, finds the band’s old balance between groove and grandeur. Forty-seven minutes, no filler-length bloat, just uneven pacing.
Best tracks:
Breathing Near the Roar
Until the End (feat. Elize Ryd)
Edge of the Night
Author’s rating: 7.5/10
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