Ahab is a German funeral doom metal band founded in 2004 by Midnattsol guitarists Christian Hector and Daniel Droste. The band is named after Captain Ahab, a character in the 1851 novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville. Along with its name, the band also draws thematic and lyrical inspiration from Moby-Dick; some songs even feature direct quotations from the book.
Near the end of 2004, with one song already written, Christian Hector and Daniel Droste decided to form a band and recorded their first single, The Stream. On 15 April 2005, after several months of rehearsing, the band's first demo, The Oath, was released. The demo was limited to 30 hand-numbered copies and contained the band's first song, "The Stream", as well as two new songs and an outro track. Nearly a year and a half later, The Call of the Wretched Sea, the group's first full-length album was released on Napalm Records with the help of new band member Stephan Adolph and session drummer Cornelius Althammer.
After the release of The Call of the Wretched Sea, the band played some few gigs in Europe.