Hurriyetdailynews.com is reporting:

Ashmedi, founder and front man for the metal band MELECHESH, is recording his new album in Istanbul with his band. Moreover, he lives in the city part time thanks to his girlfriend. The Assyrian-Armenian musician says the band is metal with Eastern sounds. The way they play their instruments is rather different than one would expect

Assyrian-Armenian musician aims to put Turkey on metal music map

Ashmedi would be an interesting person in many respects even if he were not an internationally known musician recording his next album in Istanbul.

“I am the embodiment of an identity crisis,” he said. “I’ve got an Assyrian-Armenian father. I got a mother who is Armenian, born in Syria. My father was born in Turkey.” His father was actually from Istanbul and lived not too far from the studio in Beyo?lu where the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review interviewed him.

“My father flew from here to Jerusalem, married my mother, who back then lived in Allepo, Syria.” That was in the late 60s.

His father and older brother used to visit Turkey every summer, according to Ashmedi, but his father died in a car accident when he was five months old. So, before last summer, all he knew about Turkey was a passport he used to have and a small statue they had in their house. “My father came [to Israel] from here with no animosity [about Turkey]. We actually had a small statue of Atatürk [the founder of the Republic of Turkey] in my house because he thought he was a great man,” he said.

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