Universal Music MENA recently signed  heavy metal band ZiX and released their single "Rise From Your Ashes Your Grave" featuring Blind Guardian frontman Hansi Kürssch. The band's new EP, The Ascent Of Madness, is now available on all digital platforms. The EP was recorded between Beirut and Mexico and mixed at the Audio Loft Studios in Beirut by Karim Sinno and mastered by the great King Diamond guitarist Andy La Rocque in Sweden. It features four new songs and precedes the band’s full-length album due for release in 2019. 

The tracklist is as follows:

"The Ascent Of Madness"
"Rise From Your Ashes Your Grave" (featuring Hansi Kürsch)
"Shadows Move Where Eight Should Be"
"When Time Stands Still"

"Rise From Your Ashes Your Grave" is a crossover inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s "A Dream Within A Dream" and the modern age of misinformation. Both concepts were carefully blended to showcase that in this modern age where people think they know everything, they don’t know anything at all. Everything they see or seem is only but a dream within a dream; it is a call to rise from the ashes like a Phoenix, and face the great illusion they are living in.

The biggest highlight of the song is definitely the duet performed by ZiX's lead singer Maria Danos and Hans Kürsch from Blind Guardian. The song was written by Ziad Bardawil and Juan Carrizo and recorded and mixed with the help of Karim Sinno at the Audio Loft Studio in Beirut, Lebanon.

ZiX, an acclaimed female-fronted cross-cultural heavy metal band founded in Beirut in 2010  released their debut album, Tides Of The Final War with 7x Grammy-winning producer and mixer Steve Thompson (Metallica,Yngwie Malmsteen, KISS, Anthrax, Madonna, Guns 'N Roses name a few) through German label, Puresteel records. The drummer on that album was Kenny Earl Rhino from Manowar and the album included the song "Metal Strike", which featured an all star cast composed of metal legends from Iron Maiden, Manowar, Black Sabbath and many others. The album was voted among the best top ten albums of 2016!

In 2012, ZiX completed the self-produced demo, The War Whore, and right away, the single impacted metal musicians and fans throughout the world. On the strength of that single song and ZiX’s mission in perilous territory, the great Metal Hammer Magazine voted and embraced ZiX as "one of the top 100 defenders of the faith."