Inside look on YSIGIM

The history of YSIGIM includes a quite significant beginning of something that has been called funeral doom metal years later. However, in 1993 or even earlier, in 1991, while still playing as OBNOXIOUSNESS, none of us who created and played in these bands thought about it that way.

darker than black metal

This story should probably start somewhere around 1990. Is this story important? For us, yes, for the history of YSIGIM as well, and perhaps important for understanding what it looked like. From the perspective of these folks that are behind this “early funeral doom metal bands”. 

We called this music "darker than black metal" - in our opinion there was more weight in it, more "darkness". The words funeral or doom were never used. Doom was Candlemass. Funeral as term was not used in early 90s.

everything begins somewhere

It was definitely not “hey, let’s make slow doom metal band” type of beginning. 

1990

There were two projects at the time - CADAVER and CARNAGER. We were into rather hard death metal music like Blasphemy, Sarcofago, Morbid Angel, Deicide. All of these as inspiration, influence but most of all - just music on tapes - reached us thanks to Marcin from Eternal Torment - without him it would have reached us much later, or maybe the story would not have happened at all. So how it’s possible to switch from this kind of music into something called now funeral doom? It’s like rapid braking on the highway. 

1991

I think that was when the era of new doom metal began so widely. New bands appeared and somehow it reached people. Today it's a few clicks - emails, groups - and the information went out (of course it's a separate matter whether it didn't get lost in the flood of information). Back then we were waiting for new issues of zines, new shipments with recorded cassettes and demos. It was a newsfeed.

NECRO SCHIZMA was probably the first heavy roller kind of music we got. Of course we knew HELLHAMMER, but it wasn't the time for Esoteric, Evoken, Funeral, Thergothon, or Skepticism yet. It was before. "Erupted Evil” is dated to 1989 - so before any Cathedral release. For us it was probably one year later, so half - 2nd half of 1990. But we haven’t done anything until 1991, thus this is we mark as “dive in slow doom metal music”. 

It was something that stole our hearts and heads back then. The idea of ​​playing such slow and heavy music verified both our friends and buddies from the band (CADAVER/CARNAGER) - we were left alone, the two of us. It was too heavy, too incomprehensible. That's how OBNOXIOUSNESS was created. The problem was, most of folks wanted to play faster, because of moshpit during gigs, this music was too slow. Around bands were thrash or death metal. The black metal was not that present like in Norway, I would say central/southern Europe got it later in the form we know. Switzerland was coming with Samael, we had Pandemonium in Poland, then Christ Agony, Behemoth and a few more, but mainstream these year was death metal. This was what was bringing people to gigs. 

OBNOXIOUSNESS

We had to learn everything from scratch. First of all... Marcin Kowalski gave up playing guitar in favor of drums. That gave us a chance to play. We lacked a bassist, we searched, we tried - the first bassist with whom we managed to play for more than 3 months came only in 1994. Either our music was too difficult to play (not even in the technical sense) or we were too difficult to play with. Secondly, vocals... I don't know what got into my head then to take on this :) Nowadays - bands without bass guitar are not that rare. Baritone guitars are kind of daily use, not that unique and not available as in 90s. 

Octavers suck

The low tuning was introduced almost immediately. The octaver never worked for me, it sounded artificial, but let's not kid ourselves - back then it was some kind of DOD, a BOSS pick. I first retuned the guitar by 5 semitones. As if one string more - I couldn't even dream of a 7-string - Steve Vai's signatures and models debuted at a price of almost 2000 USD. Today, a 7-8-9 string guitar is within reach and doesn't cause kidney dislocation.

Ultimately, OBNOXIOUSNESS oscillated around 6-7 semitones down, left behind three demos, of which paradoxically the second demo is very close in sound and concept to Ain Soph Or YSIGIM (the material differs by 1.5 years in recording vs. Ain Soph Or recorded July/August 1993). You can find a description of the OBNOXIOUSNESS demos here.

1992

For us - our personal doom metal was born in 1992. Of course, it all started a year earlier, even with our modest participation, but realistically speaking - what we recorded in mid-1993 was formed a year earlier.

Playing in a two-person line-up - on the one hand, it caused problems - especially in the concert direction, because the form of what you can play is very raw and sparse, on the other hand, with two people it was a bit easier to make material, maybe that's why OBNOXIOUSNESS recorded three demos in a little over 1.5 years. We didn't play many concerts - but you could hear us somewhere, among others, alongside VIOLENT DIRGE, PANDEMONIUM and a few other bands.

1993

We could write a book about changing the name - why we did it, why you shouldn't do it, about the fact that you start over and it's not a good idea, because after all, you're continuing something so it's a bad idea end it and separate by different name. And yet we did it more than once.

In 1993 we changed the name from OBNOXIOUSNESS to YSIGIM. Because it was shorter. Because it was different. Because we already knew what we wanted to do, OBNOXIOUSNESS was a time of searching and experimenting for us. YSIGIM was an adult OBNOXIOUSNESS, without maturing. Yeah, but changing name for the band is stupid. Period.

We have been recording "Ain Soph Or" all the summer 1993 long. We made up for the lack of equipment... with clever hacks and tricks. We solved the lack of a bass guitar by tuning my guitar 12 semitones, an octave down. Surprisingly - it sounded. Some gigantic thick jazz strings did the trick. I recorded it on a selfmade guitar - a guitar that was from element of a few guitars, but its key element were two pickups that had rewound windings and had a gigantic strong signal. Even the Dimarzio Super Distortion lost through here. I don't know what the original need for such pickups was - but I got them from Marek Kwiatek - my dad's fellow that may be known in the music community - he made better copies of Fender Twins or Mesa Boogie than the originals were. I had a copy of Mark III from him - a brilliant set (combo + column), of course not for music like YSIGIM - but it was a copy that could stand in the shop next to the original without any sign of the shame.

Returning to the tuning, the rhythm guitar recorded in a tuning one octave lower than the original sounded a bit like a bass, but I recorded the guitar normally, with distortion etc. Then, instead of retuning my guitar to a more normal tuning, I made with this low tuning approach to the lead guitars - it was a bit strange, because you had to intonate everything very precisely - from pressing the frets to any bends, even too strong articulations with the pick caused the sound to deviate from the tuning.

Another drawback - we got around the lack of good-sounding keys by recording... our own voices instead of keys. Yes, we "howl" there.

And finally - like a cherry - it is recorded 100% per instrument. There was no other option. First the guitar as a base, then the drums, then the backing vocals, then the lead guitar, finally the vocals. Instrument by instrument until we finally gathered it into four "regular" tracks plus the setting. 37 minutes.

Because it took a while, and we wanted to show off what we do, we quickly mixed two tracks, which we wrapped in the title "Ensoph". I don't know how many copies we copied, maybe even just a few, we simply added these two tracks to tapes we sent to friends or zines - and when we finished recording in August 1993 we knew that this quick mix wasn't something important to us, that we wanted to finish it and give it to someone for a sensible mastering.

New Year’s Eve 1993

We were incredibly lucky that Robert Brylewski picked up phone when we have called, and that he has wanted to meet on New Year's Eve and do the mastering for us. This is also great story to tell about but let’s keep it simple now. Most of all remember it as example of killing fuckin procrastination of “he won’t answer the phone for sure”, “he won’t do it - it’s totally different music”, “he won’t do it today”. He did it all. 31st of December 1993, Robert has finished it around 9PM, so still with party time to New Year. And we have done there biggest year of our 90s.

1994

On the one hand, it was an interesting year, some concerts, some composing of new things, Ain Soph Or came out on cassette, although we tried to release it on vinyl, no one dreamed of a CD, gloss master cost 1000 USD + pressing + printing - it was killing our budget.

However, having cassettes, we sent them to maybe 5 labels. Of course, looking back now, these choices made no sense. Because sending Ain Soph Or to a death metal label with zero catalog with anything more experimental places has not even a percent chance of any reply, even in the form of "no".

We have exchanged correspondence with Peaceville these days, which at some point ended with their information that at the moment they were not interested in new bands. Today we know - from the biographies of Paradise Lost - that this was the moment when they went bankrupt.

1994 was the year we co-opted for short time Thomas Wojewoda (gutiar) then Wojtek Kusmierski (bass) and Adam Hertel (guitar).

1995

For some unknown reason and not on our initiative, Wild Rags appeared with a proposal to release “Ain Soph Or” on CD. Or even two CDs, because that was what the contract looked like. From our perspective - despite the lack of financial settlement of 10,000 pressed CDs - it was a good prospect for promoting the band. What we got from Wild Rags was a total of 100 CDs (and these are most of the Ain Soph Or CDs in Poland) as so-called author's copies, we did not receive CDs for promotion in Poland etc. despite the fact that it was included in the contract, Richard finally sent us CDs for promotion, but he indicated that it would be deducted at wholesale price from our remuneration. So de facto we paid for these CDs ourselves. If we had known how the settlement would go, we would have taken the remuneration in CDs :) in full and in front.

In March 1995 we played at a very cool Jak'EM Troll festival in Ostroleka. There was great energy, very good reception - when we recalled the concerts, apart from Castle Party it was probably the best concert, especially from that period. We have been lucky to get in hands recording from this festival, even the sound is poor, it’s great documentary of that time and line up, aspecially showing changes that occured in the band’s direction.

After some months Adam Hertel has been replaced by Marcin Kuchniak, but more honest description is to write, that Adam has left the band. 

This was not stable for long - Marcin Kuchniak and Wojtek parted ways with us at the end of the year - it was their decision, but Marcin and I were basically hanging around it. I think the guys wanted to play something different, they gained a bit of confidence because playing together, touring, they wanted to try to have their own band - maybe it was because YSIGIM was Marcin's and my band, that Ain Soph Or was our own recording, etc.

Throughout that year we tried to find some kind of recipe for adding keyboards, female vocals - it didn't get us anywhere. Was it a waste of time? Yes and no. Then as now - time just slipped away. We gained experience, but maybe we should have been sitting in the studio and recording instead.

Just as we ended 1993 with a new production in our hands (or rather on DAT), we ended 1995 by literally going back to the starting point from 2 years ago: just the two of us, with a pressed record that never reached us, changing the cover of Whispers after a conversation with Marcin Kuchniak and Wojtek Kusmierski and sending it express to WildRags.

1996

All these adventures with people probably caused us to have another stupid idea to change the name. Of course we explained to ourselves that it was a transitional stage, we were freezing YSIGIM, we would try to do it differently under a new name, new people, slightly different playing etc. We were left with the YSIGIM album in our hands, a ton of explanations about why we were changing the name again, where YSIGIM was and what SEASON was. Everyone advised us against changing the name after the album was released. Because no one does that, even when they change the style of music, as examples - Paradise Lost, Katatonia, Opeth etc.

SEASON

Would YSIGIM go where SEASON did? In the sense of lighter music, normal vocals, added female vocals, keyboards? In a way, we were there in 1994, only with the wrong people and it didn't stick together. SEASON started with the songs that were already “work in progress” during the YSIGIM period - including Moon Goddess / Silent.

1999

SEASON stopped at its own weakness, but left us in the area of ​​gothic metal, or maybe it was doom metal? We never followed the definition of our music.

1999 the beginnings of YSIGIM's comeback unfortunately had a very difficult time. Firstly, at that time we got a bit more into MIDI, sequencers and some keyboard stuff. It simplified creating skeletons of ideas etc but in the same time it was complicated with some technical aspects.

Secondly, to some extent, our visits to Castle Party as SEASON opened our minds with Marcin to things other than "metal". We always listened to a very wide spectrum of music, but I think seeing live performances of music opened our minds a bit.

So what's the problem? In 1999 there was no PC in my house anymore, I switched everything to MacOS, which caused a really big problem how to exchange between even two Cubase programs but on different platforms. Somehow we didn't do the simplest way out of the situation, which was to use the computer only as a recorder to render a wav/aiff track. We wanted to have a workstation and on both sides of the hardware barricade and we failed.

It has coincided with my detox for almost 5 years from harder music. I have sold everything - amplifiers, guitars, equipment, I only kept one guitar strap. Then a jazz box appeared, a piccolo double bass and I sailed into other regions than any metal.

2005

This is our first attempt at new music. For doom metal fans, unfortunately, it wasn't good news, the return to making music with Marcin oscillated more in electronics, dark industrial. For three years, with some breaks, we made different tracks, mixes, added, subtracted and it seemed like there was something, but something was missing. 

2016

The second attempt to come back with YSIGIM - unfortunately also without success, but there was progress. We recorded some of my vocals, changed the arrangements of a few songs created in the meantime, we got close to coming back. There was one good change from that period: Marcin switched to bass guitar.

We were slowly tinkering around, but nothing new was being created, rather we were trying to put it together to the end. And then there were pandemics and other wild snakes.

2022

We have summarized what we have, what we want, what we can. We accidentally found some hidden Ain Soph Or tapes and maybe that pushed us to do something. We have stopped waiting.

2023

We started by organizing old things, we managed to get all the OBNOXIOUSNESS demos, the quality of it is of course poor, but it was very important for us to close this topic - which was created in 1991-1992. Because it was our beginning of playing something you now call funeral doom metal.

Since October we started recording new things. We changed our approach to the topic a bit - the most important thing for us is recording. This is what leaves a mark.

Since December you can say that the machine has started. We have uploaded - somewhat symbolically - Ain Soph Or in the original, unchanged version from 1993 on Bandcamp and Spotify.

2024

We started the year with Obnoxiousness's productions also being published on Bandcamp / Spotify etc.

There was a plan that unfortunately didn't come to fruition. We have reconnected with Mariusz Rachuba, we talked about music, about music together. We had a plan in my head for this, for Mariusz's plan with YSIGIM, but we didn't make it. Mariusz died on April 2, 2024. He simply disappeared.

These last conversations about music only convinced me that it was a good time to get back to playing. Without thinking. Without waiting for a better moment.

We didn't go back to playing with Mariusz, but we did go back to recording.

On October 31st we published "proof of sound" or where we are sonically. A new version of SelfBlessing from Ain Soph Or. New because recorded from scratch. After over 30 years in the sound we wanted in 1994.

Two weeks later, on November 13th, a new YSIGIM production - Dead God Lies - premiered online. Again, a summary, or compilation. Firstly, three new sounds - Dead, Self Blessing, Lies. Secondly - a summary of the years 2005-2008, or remixes and versions of the songs we created back then. It was supposed to be a single, but 47 minutes of music came out.

Another two weeks later - a still warm pressing of this production on CD landed in our hands. After another two weeks later we have received limited pictureMD release of both “Dead God Lies” and “Ain Soph Or”.  

32 years after it has started… we are back.

2025

From the beggining of the year we have focused on new album works.

On 8th March we have published brand new song “Endless” which is the first single for upcoming album titled “Sins”. 

The single follows musically the direction we have showed on “Dead God Lies” with song “Lies” with growing heavyness, sad, melancholy riffs with overhelming mood of the funeral doom metal tunes we did in the past. 

Second single entitled “Forever Unblessed” has been released on 22th of August on all band’s streaming services.

Ain Soph Or is coming back

One of the biggest points of 2025 will be definately reedition cult funeral doom metal album “Ain Soph Or” in it's entirely raw form of mastering done by Robert Brylewski in last hours of the 1993. We have licenced Dying Sun Records to press both CD and the cassette formats. More over that, we have made decision that this will be special double CD album edition including all demos from OBNOXIOUSNESS, so think about it as anthology of our works from 1991 to 1993. This will be exclusively for CD release, the cassette will be pure reedition of 1994 form including “Ain Soph Or” itself.

slowly parting with Spotify towards Soundcloud

One of our decisions for this year is to part with Spotify and be more connected with Soundcloud. There are many reasons for that, but it won’t be like rapid cut off, we well be slowly moving towards what we feel better for our music. This is platform you can reach our new stuff first.