Hello there, fellow human – let me introduce myself!
My name is Michael Woess.
I’m known on YouTube as RISTRIDI. I’m a guitarist, music producer and sound engineer based in Augsburg, Germany.
At the age of eleven, I was introduced to Metallica and was immediately hooked to the music. After taking guitar lessons for about 3 years initially, I decided to continue playing on my own and continue self-tought.
Now, over a decade later, I run a YouTube Channel that is doing well and produce my own and other artist’s music.
I uploaded my first YouTube Video back in 2009. Having fun making music and creating videos, I continued building this channel – it has now grown to feature about 300 uploaded videos, over 15.000 subscribers and over 3 million views in total.
My first band projects ReBorn and Zenithal Drought each had a different approach –
ReBorn was a local music group in which I played my first live gigs, whereas Zenithal Drought was a studio project in which I collaborated with friends from all over the world.
ReBorn and Zenithal Drought each released one demo before splitting up..
In 2012, I joined the Blackened Death Metal band SEKTOR from Landshut, Germany.
The band released two albums: ALPHA (2014) and Allegory (2017) , both of which feature my guitar work.
SEKTOR also played quite a few live gigs – like for example supporting Obscura and Thulcandra at their 15th anniversary concert in Landshut, Germany.
But because the focus shifted for each member in the last few years, the band is currently on hiatus.
After a long period of inactivity with composing my own music, I returned to writing songs after facing a personal crisis in early 2017. Thus, a new project was born.
OMEGA POINT is a Black Metal Project with progressive nuances, which featured friends who contributed greatly to the quality of this experiment.
The first OMEGA POINT Album “The Descent”, thematically revolves around self-doubt, depression and mental health. By deciding to produce it all on my own, I made my first steps into the world of professional recording, mixing and mastering.
The second album “ISOLATION” was released later in the same year and was written directly after the writing for the first album was finished. “ISOLATION” evolved around dark existential thoughts and has a lyrical concept behind it, telling the story of the protagonist’s friend lost to suicide.
With a newly gained focus, I then enrolled at the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt in early 2018 to find out more about about music production and sound engineering. I finished my studies with a grade of 1,8.
Since 2019, I work as a freelancing sound engineer and music producer – head over to https://omega-music-production.de for more about this topic.
In February 2020, I officially joined the German Dark Metal Band Agathodaimon under the stage name Nakhateth. In 2022, Agathodaimon released their comeback record “The Seven”, with RISTRIDI playing a major role in the writing process.
In mid 2022 Agathodaimon signed a worldwide label deal with Napalm Records. Also, I am now officially endorsed by Jackson Guitars and Rotosound Strings.
In November 2022, RISTRIDI left Agathodaimon.
In June 2023, RISTRIDI announced a new EP featuring Frankior, VonYanesh, Mortos and many other befriended musicians called “DARK SOLSTICE”
Listen to the first track here: https://youtu.be/yAzePvRhFbQ