The History Of Aish


Aish is the brainchild of guitarist David Steinberg, aka "Jiggy Fly". He started the band in the autumn of 2001, along with his good friend Nick Cipriano (drums) while they were both attending NYU. David and Nick had met the year before in AV class and wanted to start jamming at that time, but they put their plans on hold until later because Nick was about to spend a semester overseas, studying in France. Upon Nick's return, they started jamming and composing music. They also began searching for a bass player

One particular day David and Nick were having the usual discussion about what to call themselves, and shooting the usual metal sounding ideas back and forth. After exhausting many name ideas, David was struck by an interesting idea. "Hey Nick" he said, "why do we have to name ourselves in English? Latin might be cool, or maybe some other language." David, being partially fluent in Hebrew thought for another moment and said, "How do you thing the word 'Aish' sounds?" Nick said, "Aishhmmit's monosyllabic, and that's pretty cool, and very metal, and I like bands that have names that start with the letter A. What does it mean?" David replied smiling, "Heh, you'll like this. It means 'fire' in Hebrew! How metal is that!" Nick nodded his head approvingly, "Awesome!" From that day forward they were known as "Aish".


Unfortunately, they still needed a bassist. They searched far and wide, found several people interested, but none were the right fit. One of these was Andrew Malozemoff, a composition student also from NYU. Being somewhat of a technical metal band, speed is a necessity. Andrew's musical knowledge was extensive, but he just wasn't quick enough. So David and Nick were back to square one. After the summer of 2002, Andrew wanted another whack at it, so we agreed, but only because of his amazing compositional abilities. They couldn't have been more blown away by what Andrew did. Apparently, he had spent the whole summer practicing like an insaniac, and got himself up to speed. Beside themselves with both joy and astonishment, they inducted Andrew as the new F cleffer. David and Andrew immediately started jamming all the time and composed a ton of new music.

It was also around this time that Nick started having less and less time for the band. Nick, being quite the excellent audio engineer had become the chief engineer at Beat Street Productions, and had little free time. During the winter of 2002, Nick said his final farewells to Aish as he no longer could balance his rising career as an up and coming audio engineer and the time commitment needed for a band at the same time. The recording industry is just too demanding and time consuming, so David and Andrew wished the best of luck and much success to Nick in his new endeavors.

Once again, Aish was missing a member of the lineup. David and Andrew continued writing music, and searched for a new drummer, but like everyone knows, finding bassist and drummers is near impossible, especially ones who play at very high levels of technicality.

At the end of the summer of 2005, Andrew announced that he too would be leaving. He was offered an opportunity to study in Poland for a year and decided he would do it. Wracked by hard times and depression, David was now musically alone and considering not having a band ever again, and just doing studio projects for himself in his spare time.

At the same time, David's long time friend Brett Grimm parted ways with his previous band over that summer. Brett Grimm, being in a similar state of musical solitude traded stories of band woes with David during a telephone call one evening. Upon hearing of the similar situations they were both in, they decided they should start jamming together. One of the first questions David asked Brett was, "Is this a new project? What are we going for here?". Brett said that he was hoping they could continue making the music that was being made in Aish.

And so it was. Aish became as it is today and continues to forge ahead bringing metal a variety of new sounds and flavors to enjoy. Stick around, because Aish is just gearing up, and will be sonically defiling you in person in the very near future!

Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.