Progressive metal act Meytal was founded in 2013 by Meytal Cohen, who first grew in popularity thanks to her drum covers on YouTube. Four years after the release of the Alchemy debut, the band has returned with The Witness, due April 5. The album features a cover of the Eagles classic "Hotel California," which you can hear below.

Covering such a legendary song is a bold move and Meytal did a remarkable job reworking the track to conform to their sound. Singer Sahaj Ticotin, best known as the singer for veteran hard rock outfit Ra, has now joined the ranks of Meytal. His powerfully emotive voice is the one link to the original version while the instrumentation gets heavier and experimental.

Joining Meytal wasn't an easy decision for Ticotin, who has also found success as a producer, even co-writing three of the new Motley Crue songs for The Dirt film. He recalled everything as follows:

I first met Meytal in 2012 when she set out to make her first original album. It was a huge undertaking as she had never done original music to that point but after the success of that record she wanted to create a second album, but unfortunately lost that singer to another band.

She then tried to find a replacement but when no one was able to measure up she asked me to take over. At first I was very against the idea as I already had a full plate as a producer and a writer but eventually through a lot of coaxing I was convinced to take the reins as singer. I knew that my voice was still in good shape and that I had grown as an writer/artist/producer a lot since the last Ra record in 2013, but it was going to be a challenge.

I'm very satisfied with the way the album came out and I think the far-reaching attempts in certain songs were very successful. From a singing standpoint I wanted to make sure that the album didn't sound overproduced so I refrained from using a lot of studio tricks in order to get the vocals to sit right. I wanted it to sound very real and unprocessed.

In choosing the cover we had the choice between something contemporary and something classic but we all agreed that something contemporary would be a risk in that it might not be relevant by the time the album came out and I'd once sang 'Hotel California' on a cruise ship and weirdly found that it suited my voice!

The challenge of course was to find a way to make it somewhat prog-metal and authentic to the albums vision but eventually I had a concept of how to approach it and I'm happy with the result. This record represents for me an ambitious attempt to bring a certain kind of singing back to hard rock but ultimately it’s got it’s own thing and i’m proud of it!

See the artwork for The Witness below and look for pre-orders to become available on March 15. Follow Meytal on Facebook to stay up to date with the band.

Meytal, The Witness Album Art

Meytal
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