Not to start out all somber and morbid and all… But some things just make you wonder. Things have been chaotic lately – that’s putting it mildly… Oh everything is as gritty, unpredictable and overwhelming as usual… The Band is thrashing ahead, the Company is falling into place systematically, the concept of studying looms over my head (very little done about it), can’t complain about my sex life, confusion meets contempt, life’s more intricate dramatic moments are depicted these days in full color… Trust me… At times it makes the flick Running with Scissors look like the Muppet Show for Prozac addicts.

My Bloody Valentine… It was an awesome gig and all 3 Bands ripped everyone’s hearts out with intense performances that shook the hinges off Colombo 7. Feedback from the gig so far has been pretty fucking sweet. Sword of the Spirit shattered the serene, their version of Pantera’s ‘This Love’ was a particularly neat execution of a Metal classic… Paranoid Earthling blew the place up and Stigz had a blast as always and threw in Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’ in the concoction to spice up the lust in the joint. As a token of appreciation to our hardcore Saints we compiled a VCD with the video for My Malice which we shot recently and a Live clip of us performing ‘Spiral Coma’ in New Delhi, India. It was meant as a collector’s item and was handed free at the entrance… a self financed and absolutely independent project. Some people didn’t see the point of it, but we wanted to get it done and we did. A special thank you goes out to everyone from the 3 Bands, Team Stigz and 891 who made MBV a rollicking success!

891… Work started coming in slowly, but now as word has got around every week there’s someone new who wants to work with us. So here we are trying to make some sense and order of it all, getting everything into motion. We’ve already begun a Brand Building campaign for a new premium jewellery brand in town; from designing new funky jewellery pieces (we are gonna design a separate line for Rock fanatics) to conceptualizing the showroom interior, to the corporate literature to all the initial marketing. We have about 6 potential clients out of which 2 are readily confirmed and the rest will acquire our exquisite services soon… very soon… till then it’s back to dog eat dog aka: the survival of the fittest, the sickest and anyone who doesn’t want to do things the conventional way.

I am incredibly thankful that through every ordeal and shit-storm that I have had the incomprehensible blessing of a Grey Area partner in crime who shares a common love and lust for such things as pain, submission, domination, restraint, calculated terror, endless hours of foreplay and happening, brain chilling intercourse. It’s so violently intense that it makes you prepare for almost anything in bed, but still manages to surprise you occasionally.

Who needs Redbull when you’ve got Mojo eh?

So over the past few months it has been largely believed that I have begun to grow distant from some of my lady pals and sausage peers in the click. It was also largely speculated that the reason for my sudden estrangement was due to the fact that I am seeing someone at the moment, who is believed to be a Succubus of some sort. Now… time heals but it also fucks up things too often than not, and there were a lot of misunderstandings, grievances and malevolent spooks in the attic that had to be dragged out in the open and exorcized. So a meeting was arranged for 891 and all the Superheroes, Funky Villains and Crackpots gathered en masse to discuss the matter at hand. The issue was raised, it was addressed and I believe – at least for the moment – laid to rest. As you all may have noticed my on-line presence has diminished in the past few months, and I assure you it has nothing to do with negligence, bad time management, love, obsession or reclusive paralysis; it’s because we’ve pushed our lifestyle up a slight notch… you know, we’ve got a better place, we’ve got a great working and creative environment but at the same time the responsibilities and apparent burdens have accentuated tenfold.

We’ve got to push twice as hard now to keep a steady cash flow because we’ve got reasonably high rent to pay, electricity, water, phone and internet bills, then there’s food and transport in SL… the cost of living has shot sky motherfucking high and it’s painful. You walk into a store with 1000 Rupees buy a few bottles of milk, some yoghurt, KY Jelly, some fruit and a loaf of bread and the next thing you know you’re returning home with a few coins jangling in your pocket.

But with every day that passes I feel we are all working towards achieving and solidifying something truly monumental… Something pure and void of bullshit… something that doesn’t sport mere farmed generic value. We’ve all got a long way to go… But 891 is first and foremost my Family and that can’t and will NOT be affected or threatened by love, lust or life.

I am moody and temperamental… I can be difficult and silent sometimes. But that’s the beauty of individuality isn’t it? You’re undisclosed liberty to experience the good and bad things in life and to appreciate different situations, different emotions and how you make all these relevant to you at the end of the day is what’s important. My silence stems from a lot of self-atonement and inner-analysis and that’s just how things are sometimes. But now that I am aware that it’s triggered a negative wave among my peers I’ve told myself to just be aware of the fact that I am a moody bastard and that I will not intentionally bastardize other people’s joy because of it.

See… you can teach a relatively not so old Dog new tricks. That would mean that a benevolent lady would have to sponsor a Collar & Leash, along with a comfy AC’d Kennel with Pain of Salvation’s & Morbid Angel’s entire discography, all of Mo Hayder’s novels, have 3 good meals provided daily, some occasional attention and I am fully partial to the notion of ‘Walk the Dog’ or to have myself or my doggie walked.

The good news is that I’ve actually started working on my lovely-happy-go-sucky novel again, been penning (or typing rather) down a lot of lyrics and now I’ve got enough for a full book of poetry and the next 3 records. So Stigz have 6 tunes composed and complete, and we’ve just nailed ‘Nothing’ in merely four days and it’s an epic bulldozer of thrash and speed Metal with a lot of emotion in it… it’s a more straightforward ‘get your neck ready for a cervical collar’ kind of tune which bites from the word go. You’ll love the tripped out psychedelic bits. The beauty of being an artiste is that you can choose to paint whatever you want, on whatever you want using the colors of your preference. Can’t wait to play ‘Nothing’ live and kick universal butt.

Then we’ve got to work on ‘Purer’, ‘Calm’, ‘My Savage Pilgrimage’ and hold on to your most revered private part for this… ‘Rush in the Twilight Silver Slithering Stream’.

Yes… I am nuts, my nuts are also fine.

So z plan is to compose and commence recording soon… because we’ve got a festival confirmed in Bangladesh on the last weekend of March, a gig in Male (which we can’t wait to play, hoping that it won’t clash with Bangladesh though…) and we are sorting out Visas for a 2 week Tour of Barley, Indonesia. I am thinking that 2 weeks in Indonesia’s party capital may not be such a bad thing for us. The tired, hard working, slaves that we are.

2008 is when Asian Extreme Metal will rip the sinew off the music world’s bones.

Go ahead girls, crack those whips and pull those reigns ‘cos when push hits shove, we don’t waste a second.

I know that for every good thing that comes our way at least 5 tragedies will pop up somehow. It’s not equilibrium as much as it is fate’s way of playing Spin the Bottle. You never know what to completely expect, and if we did then there would be no surprises in life. Without the element of surprise life would just be like a movie with the same situations and scenarios playing over and over again.

So as we get ready to spread our music like Asia’s new Black Plague to the world around us, I am done with psychological roulette… let the shock’s and tragedies keep comin’, ‘cos hey, at least the uncertainties are certain these days right?

Missed all you fuckers…

\m/