Everything started about 6 years ago at a party, where we decided to form a metalband. This quickly resulted in a couple of rehearsals and the choice of a bandname: ASHMOLEAN. The music we played those days can be described best as Death Metal. The line-up back then was: Jan Boeckx (drums), Jef Boeckx (bass), Wim Melis (guitars), Rob Slegers & Nik Mertens (vocals).

Within less than a year we already had a change in this line-up. Bart, the younger brother of Jan and Jef, became our keyboard player making our music more melodic and more “black-orientated”. His musical knowledge and classical education were a giant step forward for us, resulting in our first demo “Close... as red in blood” which we recorded in the soundshape studio (Arendonk) in the summer of 1997.

Thanx to this demo we did not only had the privilige to play with bands like: Ancient Rites, Avatar, Excess of Cruelty, ... but we also made it to the finals of a couple of contests, from which there was victory in “The First Blood Awards”.

Meanwhile we kept spending as much time as possible in creating new songs. This resulted into a second demo recorded only one year later 1998. “Elegy's for your embrace” became a mixture of black and death-metal with lots of variation between the two vocalists.

Due to a lack of time, Jan (drums) and Jef (bass) decided to leave the band in 1999. Shortly after, we found Guy Vernelen (drums) and Wim Meeus (bass) prepared to fill the void. After this change in personal though, we made the decision to write an entirely new set of songs and to keep a low profile until we were certain we were a band again. In 2000 Rob also decided to quit the band because of the lack of nessecary time to be an active member.

Then finaly in June 2001, after 2 years of rehearsing and writing songs, we returned to the studio to record our third demo: “Daylight Struggle”. This ambitious recording is the ultimate proof, for us, that we're back and ready to hit the stages.

In juli 2002 we decided to get a second guitarplayer to fill some gaps and found Raf Aarts to do this job.