Hail Spirit Noir-Pnuema

The review starts from the next paragraph, this one has me cribbing about my life
I figured it's been a while since i last updated my blog, for those who care i do have my reasons, well let's just say that  my exams were closing in and i could not sleep or do regular stuff the way i do without the fear of failing the next day's paper. So yeah, now that my exams are over i have been gifted with an infinite amount of free time and so i decided to make the best use of it by writing a review about a band i started listening to a while ago- Hail Spirit Noir, so here's the review.

I recently started listening to a lot of grind and black metal bands, two genres i thought were badly constructed noise and nothing more, and i was mistaken, heavily mistaken as a matter of fact and this amazing band from Greece played a huge part in proving me wrong. Now these guys are not black metal  per se, a quick visit to their website will tell you that they are progressive black metal, now i don't know if they are progressive or not, since my knowledge of prog rock does not exceed Pink Floyd(that too very little of it), but i can safely say one thing, they sound weird. By weird i do not mean incomprehensible guitar farts and vomit inducing vocals, when i say weird i mean it in a nice way, the keyboards generate the perfect atmosphere which makes you feel like you are in a never ending graveyard at midnight while spirits of the graveyard cha-cha-cha around, yes that spooky.

Another very important aspect of this album is the Ghost influence, Ghost with their debut album Opus Eponymous have become an instant hit in the heavy metal underground, and the influence is clearly visible here, right from the clean vocals to the guitar tone, but Hail Spirit Noir are certainly not a Ghost rip-off band and have great amounts of originality too. This is a truly enjoyable album start to finish, but the crowning glory of the album has got to be "Into The Gates Of Time" a thirteen minute song which starts off like a classic rock song giving way to a King Diamond-esque raspy vocals and all of a sudden in the middle turns into a 70's pop song. The band has experimented a lot and i must say to great success, throughout the 6 songs, 37 odd minutes of this album i did not get bored even once, it creates that sort of spooky atmosphere which drags you in instantly. Other tracks which i enjoyed greatly are Haire Pneuma Skoteino(which if my sources are to be believed stands for Hail Dark Spirit, and my source is Google Translate, so can't trust them), Let Your Devil Come Inside and Against the Curse we dream and the weakest being the first track Mountain of Horror.

I can finally have my Hipster moment by saying i started listening to them before they became cool :D, because they are definitely going to be famous, at least in the metal underground, so thanks to last.fm for this amazing recommendation, truly worth listening to,if i were to score i'd give it 85/100.


Here's a video of their song if you are too lazy to do it yourself

Opinions? woh kya hota hai?

Now on the one off occasion when i do attend an English lecture i make sure that i pay attention, Why? Maybe because when i put all my efforts into trying to leave the classroom before the English lecturer comes in and fail in the process, i make sure i make the best out of it. So during this one lecture we were made to read an article and opine on it, no brainer innit? Yet for some reason the girl sitting a couple of desks away from me in the next row thought it would be a nice idea if she copies the whole damn summary from the text book. Now pardon the hypocrisy, since I am no stranger to copying in exams(though i try to keep it to a minimum), But the point i am trying to make is WHO COPIES A GODDAMNED SUMMARY! you are supposed to give an opinion on a certain issue, i fail to understand why you cannot make one for yourself. And also consider this, the girl in context happens to have come second in our college in the 1st semester papers. Now when such a student fails to give an opinion on something  so trivial(the topic was on the perils of the internet) you have to question our education system our maybe even our very social system. Oh and by the way i hold no personal grudges against the aforementioned classmate, au contraire i think she is a kind and soft spoken person.

In my opinion our education system is marks oriented more than anything else and i am sure many people agree with me here. The teachers don't care if you understood shit, all they care about is how much you scored and maybe a greeting card you send after 10 years thanking them for 'shaping your future' and praising them on their 'teaching abilities', exceptions exist if any. But it is pointless putting all the blame on the teachers.
I don't want to look like an angst ridden teenager here but honestly speaking parents are equally responsible for binding the minds of children, restricting them from forming opinions, and punishing them for being creative. Especially in India where society tells us what to do and what not to do, students burdened by expectation have no option but to let go of their creative side in exchange for good marks and a lucrative career in XYZ company(again some students do enjoy the pressure, exceptions noted). Non Conformism is frowned upon, as if it is a moral sin, you don't like to study you are not going to be anything in life seems to be the preconceived notion generated by parents in India. A new trend seems to be emerging, or maybe it has always existed and i just did not observe, kids just don't want to study anymore and the reason once again are parents, in my opinion. Accept it, if you put too much pressure on your kids, at some point, all of it is going to come back to bite you in the ass. Students lose respect for subjects like Mathematics and Physics and you cannot blame the kids for that, maybe their brains weren't made for these subjects at all in the first place instead maybe they like painting or have a keen ear for good music.

Our society seems to have been divided into various factions, one group will become engineers, the other group doctors, the other group actors, politicians etc etc and more often than not an engineer, doctor or anyone in any field for that concern will not know anything from outside their field, i remember having read an article in Pune Mirror(or some other paper maybe, not a clear memory) in which they asked general knowledge question to a few students who were among the toppers in prestigious examination, and most of them could not answer even half of those questions, this just goes to show the point i made earlier about Indian education system being marks oriented. Parents seem to have an otherworldly obsession in sending their kids into top notch colleges, which is at least better than the college Mr D-bag-the next door neighbor's son Herp Derp goes to, Why? Because our son Herp Singh is better than Herp Derp, oh by the way have you, the parents bothered to ask what your son Herp Singh wants to do? Most probably not and maybe if he voluntarily comes to you and says he wants to be something else, maybe a writer or an actor you ridicule him and laugh at him, nothing can be worse than your own parents mocking you..

I don't want anyone to think this is a rant against my parents, no certainly not, they have given me my space and i can safely make an opinion while i am with them which often leads to an argument, but hey! no one's complaining. This is a rant about our current education system and our moral system which needs a total overhaul, otherwise we Indians will not progress to our full potential and trust me when i say we have a huge potential, we are Asians after all aren't we? Parents need to stop pestering their kids and teachers need to stop checking answers as per the text book definition and book publishers need to stop copying wikipedia articles and printing them on textbooks(oh yes they do that as is evident by the unedited citations :D) and maybe stop using google translate for Marathi to English conversion, some of the shit that makes way to the text books is downright outrageous.

Now some might find this article to be too opinionated, well i am definitely not trying to shove my ideals down your throat so feel free to comment otherwise(if you read it that is)


PS- Read this interesting article i came across on Wikipedia a couple of weeks ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

This year in a nutshell

It took me roughly one and a half hour to think of a witty and interesting title and an extra half hour to think of an apt way to start the first article in my blog. Writing a blog was among my many new year resolutions for this year which got delayed by 11 months, but better late than never right?

This year has been a very good one for me, i finally bought a guitar(after  months of saving up), scored really well in my papers, made new friends, etc etc. you know the routine. Music has been a constant since the  past few years and  few of the most beautiful things that happened to me this year revolve around music, the first one being finally managing to buy my bass guitar after months and months of saving up + help from mom and a few of my relatives(Big thanks). I somehow taught myself to play the guitar(the basics at least) big thanks to a friend who lent me one for almost a year, saved money every way i could(although honestly speaking i could have saved more had it not been for the tasty Misal Pav served near my college), studied hard and scored well so that my parents could give me more $$$. I don't like to boast but i have to admit i feel proud of myself for the amount of hard work i put in to buy something that i wanted way before i became completely immersed in music. I have fond memories(and photos) of moments where i air-guitared to any song that was on the radio when i was little, now imagine how i might have felt when i finally bought a bass, oh yeah the feeling was surreal, fantasizing about something for over 10 years and finally owning one, it is a once in a lifetime moment.

Now i like to believe that i matured as a person, i don't know if anyone reciprocates those thoughts, but i certainly feel like i can take important decisions in life without succumbing to pressure from friends or family and expressing my thoughts independently irrespective of  any mocking i receive while doing the same. I also watched a lot of movies which helped me in more ways than i thought it would and in this process Tyler Durden(Fight Club) became my favorite movie character of all time and i honestly believe there is a Tyler Durden hidden in each one of us somewhere, trying to break out.

Friends have been a very important part of my life this year, more than ever. I cannot think of enough ways to thank them for being there for me and bearing those moments(if any) when i have been unreasonable and annoying. I have always received help when i wanted, right from lending a guitar for almost a year to making college a bearable place to be in, oh yes i cannot imagine how boring college would have been if it were not for a few friends i made there. I would also like to thank my parents who have always loved me unconditionally.

Now i don't want this to sound like my Nobel Prize acceptance speech so i will save the thanking for later, anywho this is where i end my first article in this blog which i hope will be viewed by someone.

Note:-

The Blog title Until Eternity Ends is the name of an EP by one of my favorite bands Edge of Sanity, the name appealed to me since the words Eternity and End contradict each other and yet beautifully fall in place together, however the correct interpretation of the Phrase Until Eternity ends can be thoroughly understood only by an intellectual or Dan Swano himself(same thing).

And as for the username nerdtallica, nerd is a word which is often associated with me, however i am far away from the stereotypical definition of a nerd. And well, i happen to be a Metal fan and Metallica is one of my favorites, plus the word nerdtallica rolls out of your mouth unlike Nerdadeth or Nerder or Nerdon Maiden or Nerd Priest or Nerdodus or Nerd Assault(which is a good name but i am not a Nuclear Assault fan at least till now).