With the release of Heaven in Flames (1999), Duane Timlin (aka Cryptic Winter) joined the band as a session drummer.
[1] Later in 2018, a man named Blake Judd also known as "Azentrius" re-released several of the Judas Iscariot releases falsely claiming they were officially authorized by Akhenaten.
[2] Akhenaten considered the story of the band Judas Iscariot as documentation of one individual's struggle against the moral boundaries set by Christianity.
[3] Akhenaten stated that his music was intended to give others strength to live in a world compromised by materialism and irrational religious ideology.
Some of the lyrics on early Judas Iscariot albums are borrowed from the works of English poet and Christian mystic William Blake,[4] as well as from English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, fundamental for understanding the connection between Dark Romanticism, the esoteric and their connection to heavy metal lyrics.