Ereshkigal

Despite releasing their debut album “The Raping of the Divine” in 2005, the roots of this Athenian Black Metal band reach as far back as the 1980s when latter-day ERESHKIGAL founder/bassist Rotten Flesh joined forces with vocalist Marduk to form the Grindcore act GRINDING DISGUST. After releasing an incredibly noisy demo entitled “Herthe Geli” (1989), G.D. subsequently morphed into the more Black/Death-oriented FLEGETHON, who also included the legendary Nikos “Flesh” Tagalos (rip) on guitars. FLEGETHON in turn released one demo in 1990 and a 7” EP on Molon Lave in 1993 before Marduk decided to call it quits. This in turn lead Rotten Flesh to pursue a new musical project in liaison with fellow FLEGETHON drummer Pinhead, naming the band ERESHKIGAL. This takes us to the year 1994, eleven years before the release of ERESHKIGAL’s first album…

The next milestone in the band’s history appears to have taken place in 1996, when Rotten Flesh and Pinhead teamed up with legendary Greek musician/producer Nigel Foxxe (FLAMES, NIGEL FOXXE’S INC., THANATOS INC., etc.) for a studio session with the prospect of recording a full-length album. However, with the recording process nearly finished, the recording studio was subjected to some kind of flooding and the master tapes suffered damage. With the damage done, the recording process went into hibernation.

Fast-forward to 2002. Rotten Flesh, Pinhead and Nigel Foxxe now attempted to save what is still to be saved of the master tapes and use the raw material as the basis for a new album. They entered Encore Studios to add all of the missing parts and during the years 2003-2005 ERESHKIGAL was able to finish the project. The album, entitled “The Raping of the Divine” (2005) was finally released via Spanish label Temple of Darkness, interestingly only lavishly designed, gatefolded and lilac/fuchsia-colored 12” vinyl (excepting the previously available promo CDs). As for the actual music, ERESHKIGAL presented a curious blend of traditional Hellenic Black/Death Metal, 1980s Heavy Metal, some Thrash elements, digital percussion and on the top of it all some truly outlandish guitar antics courtesy of Nigel Foxxe. Oh, and add to that a healthy dose of blasphemic diatribes.

As far as we know, ERESHKIGAL have remained a studio project exclusively, so there were no live shows or such following in the wake of the album’s release. During 2010, the band allegedly recorded a bunch of cover tunes (SLAYER, SLAUGHTER, VENOM and… JETHRO TULL!) along with a re-recorded version of the title-track to “The Raping of the Divine”, set for release in EP format. It appears as if this release never materialized though – at least we haven’t found any traces of it. The next release of the band instead turned out to be a new full-length album, bearing the title of “Erevos Arisen” (2020), released through Floga Records – this time on both LP and CD.

Biographies and interviews conducted with the band members throughout the years also mentions a third album planned for future release, entitled “The Æetherial Testimony”.

Compilation appearances: