Review: Wyatt E. – Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu, Part 1

Style: Doom metal, psychedelic rock, tribal ambient (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Om, Lowen, Earth
Country: Belgium
Release date: 10 January 2025

It’s the day after the 31st Akitu festival under the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II. The image of the full harvest moon is hardly a blur in your mind as you reel from a sikaru-induced hangover, hazily etching a formal complaint about a shiesty copper deal into your stone tablet underneath a date palm. Your friend stumbles over his words to yet again tell you about the funniest joke he heard the other day from a guy in Eshnunna about a dog walking into a tavern. You look up briefly from your tablet to locate the sound of muffled yelling, catching a glimpse of a figure slipping into a narrow alleyway out of the corner of your eye. A guard approaches you, asking if you’ve seen anyone run this way, to which you respond, ‘𒋫 𒀠 𒇷 𒅅 𒈠 𒋫 𒀝 𒁉 𒀀 𒄠’. Perturbed, the guard moves on in his pursuit and you continue etching out your tirade. Welcome to Babylon, crown jewel of Sumer and the setting of Belgian psych rock outfit Wyatt E.’s latest release, Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu, Part 1 (Roughly, Songs From the Temple Tower in Akkadian). Wyatt E.’s compositions explore Babylon’s seedy underbelly, chronicling the struggles of its captured peoples. Does Zamāru successfully conjure melodies from Marduk’s¹ towers on high, or am I gonna have to write another stone-tablet tirade to the gods?

With a droning psychedelic rock base, Wyatt E. incorporate heavy doom metal and a hefty chunk of modern Near East tonality into Zamāru’s soundscapes.² Evoking a dire atmosphere is the name of the game: compositions rarely focus on riffs, instead meditating on ominous ideas that build into unfathomably heavy climaxes, evoking the feeling of hostile forces lurking around every corner. Even in its quieter moments, like “The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night”, hushed and tense instrumentation pair with the prayer’s urgent prose to prevent the listener from fully basking under the otherwise languid starlight. Second track “About the Culture of Death” is particularly cinematic in its approach, using strings and booming drumwork to lead into tumbling rhythms, evoking wide-pan shots of a bellicose ancient city.

Zamāru is bookended by two mammoth atmospheric tracks, “Qaqqari lā Târi, Part 1”³ and “Ahanu Ersetum” (roughly, “To Another Place on Earth”), with smaller tracks interspersed between. Both pieces start small with amorphous soundscaping and well up into gigantic rock passages, exploding with buzzing guitar drones that overwhelm the listener by sheer force. On Zamāru, however, it’s the small things that count: more concise tracks “Im Lelya” and “The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of Night” commit wholly to atmospherics while relying on engaging percussion and melodics to evoke foreboding ancient imagery. Additionally, these tracks feature guest vocalists which help to centralize and focus Wyatt E.’s ideas magnificently. “Im Lelya”⁴ features an ethereal performance by Tomer Damsky over gentle and hypnotic percussion before the track quickly escalates into fuzzy doom riffage, and “The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night” gives Lowen’s Nina Saedi creative room to channel an ancient Babylonian prayer through a modern Iranian lens.⁵ The end result in both cases is stunning, evocative, and appropriately grim.

In comparison to the fabulously composed shorter tracks, the more extended pieces are serviceable but ultimately not mind-blowing—their atmospherics are without a doubt enjoyable; the buildups are logical; and they sit nicely within the album’s setting; but ultimately, they meander for a bit too long and lose focus before reaching their ends. Although both “Qaqqari lā Târi” and “Ahanu Ersetum” have excellent climaxes, in this atmospheric / post-metal style of songwriting, the climax partially depends on a good buildup, and when we’ve arrived at the heights of these tracks, I can’t remember for the life of me how we even got there. I would love to see a more pronounced direction on the more atmospheric tracks in Wyatt E.’s future works, similar to Zamāru’s shorter pieces.

With stunning highs and still good but comparatively middling lows, Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu, Part 1 is an effortlessly unique take on droning doom metal and psychedelic rock, infusing a tasty Near East vibe into its hostile soundscapes. Aided by talented guest vocalists, Wyatt E. conjure imagery of an idyllic ancient city with a seedy underbelly. Despite occasional flubs in the execution of longer tracks, Zamāru Ultu Qereb Ziqquratu, Part 1 will without a doubt have you saying ‘𒀸 𒁍 𒊏 𒄠 𒈠’ by its end.

Recommended tracks: The Diviner’s Prayer to the Gods of the Night, Im Lelya, Ahanu Ersetum
You may also like: Sunnata, Zaum, Neptunian Maximalism, Uulliata Digir, The Ruins of Beverast
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Heavy Psych Sounds – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Wyatt E. is:
– Gil Chevigné (drums, percussion)
– Jonas Sanders (drums, percussion)
– Stéphane Rondia (guitars, synths, vocals)
– Sébastien von Landau (guitars, bass, synth, vocals)
– Amalija Kokeza (viola)
– Tomer Damsky (session vocals)
– Nina Saedi (session vocals)

1. Marduk here referring to the patron god of Babylon, not the Swedish black metal band. ↩︎
2. Interestingly enough, the prevailing musicological theory is that the maqam tonal framework associated with modern Near East music did not originate in Mesopotamia, but was likely inspired by Greek experimentation in tonality. Additionally, the ‘classically western’ heptatonic scale is thought to have have been brought to Europe later from Mesopotamia. ↩︎
3. This roughly translates to “Descent Into the Otherworld”, based on a Mesopotamian story about the goddess Ishtar traveling to the Underworld. ↩︎
4. A reference to an ancient Hebrew fable describing four beasts which destroy four separate cities, one of which includes Babylon. ↩︎
5. I did a deep dive on this in my recent Wardruna review regarding modern music that takes inspiration from historical ideas, so check that out for a further elaboration of my thoughts. ↩︎