Aramaic is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, southeastern Anatolia, Eastern Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula, where it has been continually written and spoken in different varieties for over three thousand years.
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, a shrieking vocal style, heavily distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, raw (lo-fi) recording, unconventional song structures, and an emphasis on atmosphere. Artists often appear in corpse paint and adopt pseudonyms.
Hezekiah, or Ezekias, was the son of Ahaz and the thirteenth king of Judah according to the Hebrew Bible.
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq. In the broader sense, the historical region of Mesopotamia also includes parts of present-day Iran, Turkey, Syria and Kuwait.
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew, Maltese and numerous other ancient and modern languages. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Malta, and in large immigrant and expatriate communities in North America, Europe, and Australasia. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen school of history, who derived the name from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Book of Genesis.
Sennacherib was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Sargon II in 705 BC to his own death in 681 BC. The second king of the Sargonid dynasty, Sennacherib is one of the most famous Assyrian kings for the role he plays in the Hebrew Bible, which describes his campaign in the Levant. Other events of his reign include his destruction of the city of Babylon in 689 BC and his renovation and expansion of the last great Assyrian capital, Nineveh.
Hadad, Haddad, Adad, or Iškur (Sumerian) was the storm and rain god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions. He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. From the Levant, Hadad was introduced to Mesopotamia by the Amorites, where he became known as the Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) god Adad. Adad and Iškur are usually written with the logogram 𒀭𒅎dIM—the same symbol used for the Hurrian god Teshub. Hadad was also called Rimon/Rimmon, Pidar, Rapiu, Baal-Zephon, or often simply Baʿal (Lord), but this title was also used for other gods. The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared bearded, often holding a club and thunderbolt and wearing a bull-horned headdress. Hadad was equated with the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, as well as the Babylonian Bel.
Suret, also known as Assyrian, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by Christians, namely Assyrians. The various NENA dialects descend from Old Aramaic, the lingua franca in the later phase of the Assyrian Empire, which slowly displaced the East Semitic Akkadian language beginning around the 10th century BC. They have been further heavily influenced by Classical Syriac, the Middle Aramaic dialect of Edessa, after its adoption as an official liturgical language of the Syriac churches, but Suret is not a direct descendant of Classical Syriac.
Absu was an American black/thrash metal band from Dallas, Texas. Their demos and first album leaned towards death metal, but later adapted to the thrash/black sound the group would become recognized for. Their lyrical themes are esoteric, including themes of Celtic, Sumerian and Mesopotamian myths and legends, alchemy, numerology, magick, and sorcery.
The Assyrian homeland, Assyria, refers to the homeland of the Assyrian people within which Assyrian civilisation developed, located in their indigenous Upper Mesopotamia. The territory that forms the Assyrian homeland is, similarly to the rest of Mesopotamia, currently divided between present-day Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria. In Iran, the Urmia Plain forms a thin margin of the ancestral Assyrian homeland in the north-west, and the only section of the Assyrian homeland beyond the Mesopotamian region. The majority of Assyrians in Iran currently reside in the capital city, Tehran.
Djinn is the second full-length album by the black metal band Melechesh, and their first on Osmose Productions. A video for Genies, Sorcerers and Mesopotamian Nights was made, using an abridged version. Also note that the song "The Siege of Lachish" is actually 6 minutes and 21 seconds long; after an extended period of silence, a Mesopotamian chant played in reverse starts at 9:32.
Sphynx is Melechesh's third full-length album. The album presents the band's Mesopotamian/Sumerian metal in a more aggressive and intricate manner. The CD version includes an enhanced multimedia section featuring a trip to the world of Melechesh. There is a guest appearance from Andy LaRocque on the track "Purifier of the Stars".
The siege of Lachish was the Neo-Assyrian Empire's siege and conquest of the town of Lachish in 701 BCE. The siege is documented in several sources including the Hebrew Bible, Assyrian documents and in the Lachish relief, a well-preserved series of reliefs which once decorated the Assyrian king Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh.
Desaster are a German black/thrash metal band formed in Koblenz in 1988. Their lyrical themes involve war, hate and Satanism.
Darkend is an Italian symphonic black metal band. According to the band itself, the genre of their music is referred to as "Extreme Ritual Metal", which best describes the band's musical and visual outcome and highlights the most relevant sides of their style.
Assyrian folk/pop music, also known as Assyrian folk-pop, is the musical style of the Assyrian people derived from traditional music that includes a broad range of stylistic varieties, which would also encompass fusions of Western genres such as pop, electronic, Latin, jazz and/or classical music, with a melodic basis of Assyrian folk.
Archgoat is a Finnish black metal band formed in 1989 by twin brothers Ritual Butcherer on guitar and Lord Angelslayer on bass and vocals. It was one of Finland's first black metal bands along with Barathrum, Impaled Nazarene and Beherit. The members of Archgoat openly identify with the philosophy of Satanism and the occult as expressed in their lyrical content, which also consists of anti-Christian themes.
The Epigenesis is the fifth full-length album by the black metal band Melechesh.
Assyrian continuity is the study of continuity between the modern Assyrian people, a recognised Semitic indigenous ethnic, religious, and linguistic minority in Western Asia and the people of Ancient Mesopotamia in general and ancient Assyria in particular. Assyrian continuity and Mesopotamian heritage is a key part of the identity of the modern Assyrian people. No archaeological, genetic, linguistic, anthropological, or written historical evidence exists of the original Assyrian and Mesopotamian population being exterminated, removed, bred out, or replaced in the aftermath of the fall of the Assyrian Empire. Modern contemporary scholarship "almost unilaterally" supports Assyrian continuity, recognizing the modern Assyrians as the ethnic, linguistic, historical, and genetic descendants of the East Assyrian-speaking population of Bronze Age and Iron Age Assyria specifically, and Mesopotamia in general, which were composed of both the old native Assyrian population and of neighboring settlers in the Assyrian heartland.
Betraying the Martyrs were a French metalcore band formed in Paris in 2008. The band's final lineup consisted of vocalist Rui Martins, guitarists Steeves Hostin and Baptiste Vigier, bassist Valentin Hauser, drummer Boris le Gal, and keyboardist Victor Guillet. At the time of their breakup in 2023, they were signed to Out of Line Music. Through their previous label, Sumerian Records, Betraying the Martyrs released four studio albums: Breathe in Life (2011), Phantom (2014), The Resilient (2017), and Rapture (2019). They also released two EPs: The Hurt the Divine the Light (2009) and Silver Lining (2022).
