ViVa SAPOTA

Trendy Metal

2017-04-01T17:36:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: Sapota is writing this in mostly angry state of mind mostly because there was something, which irritated him about the whole state of affair in festivals and metal in general. So this is more of an opinion and less of a factual post. Probably what is being said here is more of a window to how sapota perceives changes in metal today and is not willing to change his outlook as a grumpy old man.

Metal, as it is, is more than a music genre, it is a whole culture and as cliche as it sound it is one of the most distinctive feature of metal as music genre when compared to other music forms. That is not to say that there are not enough passionate fans in other genre, but metal goes a step beyond just passion and metalheads live the genre and that makes their opinion stronger and more polarised. The popularity of metal has been pretty much in the same league as it was at any point, it peaks and it goes through its downs.There is always some commercialisation involved which surges its popularity by some new big band or new genre and it then comes back to a state of stability atleast in terms of retaining metal fans. There has been many trends in Metal including hair metal, arena metal, nu metal, whole *-core scene and now a lot of corporate created bands made in boardrooms by people in suits. What is most irksome is that some of these commercially created bands get more spotlight and consequently more popularity than bands slaving themselves up for decades staying true to their music and fans. One of the primary example of this phenomenon is baby metal, I have seen baby metal live, it is one of the well packaged gimmick in metal at this time and it is widely popular in metal festivals around the globe. Musically speaking the band plays nothing new, the lyrics are absolute garbage and entire setup is dishonest by tricking audience into believing that this is where the metal is heading or this is what is being inherited from the legacy of metal. Musicians themselves are not bad, infact they are all very fine at what they do,it is difficult to say if there is a lot of creative process which these musicians are part of it especially the girls who are the lead presence on the stage. They are performing as headlining act after many of other more veteran bands which have worked their arses to reach to this point in their musical careers. It is extremely infuriating to see pioneers of their respective genres third or fourth in line ups of major festival or gig line up compared to these bands which still have their milk teeth in their mouth.
On one occasion, Napalm death performed before Children of bodom! To put it in perspective Napalm death has been in existence before the inception of subgenre which CoB is playing and not to mention they have been among the 4-5 bands which are responsible for creation of death metal. We can get into semantics of how grindcore is not deathmetal, but we all know if there is one genre closest to death metal, it is grindcore which stands right next to it like an old tree with its roots deeply entangled with each other. There were rabid fangirls screaming about how cute Alexi is and it was less about music and more about the whole aesthetic of the band. I don't think CoB are bad band per se, in fact some of their music is excellent, but compared to other major Death Metal gaints, they are still teenagers.
Similar to this I saw Amon Amarth headlining after Carcass. It was one of the most unbelievable thing for me. Similar to Napalm death they are fathers of grindcore and step father of Death metal. Amon Amarth themselves are fantastic band, they have a great theme and some pretty amazing show. They also suffer from same phenomenon as CoB but instead of cuteboi fans, they have more viking fanboys. The manly mans who have large beard and have cow horns for drinking beer in middle of a live song. They have put out some great records and now they are now who's who of the whole Scandinavian death metal scene. But again, it has less to do with their music and more to do with the whole trendy imagery thing going on for them. Carcass on the other hand are pretty serious musician, Necrotism is one of the greatest record that has ever come out in metal history, there are very few which come even remotely close to what that record has achieved. Sadly it is not as popular a record as it should be, the mastercraft of death metal/grindcore, a genre reshaping master piece. Something the likes of which Amon amarth has not produced yet. I am not going to talk about heartwork here because that would just be unfair and the point I was making about the musical craftsmanship of Carcass as band has already been proven by Necrotism.
The third band which really riled me up when they were announced as headliners over thrash metal legends Kreator is Ghost. I have seen Ghost twice, they are not a bad band. They have all the bells and whistles in place for them to become a good band and I can respect their whole persona and music but they are mostly riding the waves of hype created by media and to some degree commercial aspect of band's appeal. To look at it, the band is less than a decade old, it is mostly about the get up and atmosphere, which has been done to the death by likes of King Diamond. I am not a big fan of King Diamond, but I can respect it for its originality and standing the test of time. Then their second important aspect is all this talk about horror as concept for lyrics! gimme a break! Rob Zombie has done it and done it pretty well, there are more bands doing horror as theme than entire catalogue of Ghost and doing it much better. Musically speaking even on their best day, Ghost are strictly a mediocre band, chanting heil satan in chorus doesn't speak to me greatly about the quality of composition. Now comparing it to the likes of Kreator? The band that has existed for three decades, a band which has help shape thrash metal and one of the major influence in Death Metal themes. The band that has lived so long that it has seen atleast three major trends of metal emerge and die a horrible death. Their performance are so electric and full of life compared to Ghost where nuns throwing condoms at the crowd is the best they can come up with? I mean I understand the Irony and humour in it, but come on, these guys are not a more deserving headliners compared to Kreator.
Anyway, this also defeats the whole point of my own argument that Metal was never a popularity contest, it has always survived in basements and garages and crappy tape records and in third wold countries and small rockzines. It will survive, but places where metalheads gather and see the performance, the bands which are older and have more contribution to the music should get more preference over bands which are just trendy and popular. I mean I see the hypocrisy of metalheads always moaning about Metallica being a sell out and disliking them for their massive popularity but then on the same hand hyping bands like Baby metal and Ghost to prominence over bands which have endured the wrath of time and stayed true to the craft. Probably any of this doesn't matter in grand scheme of things, these trendy bands will be forgotten but the true masters will continue to live on and remembered and honoured.

Dee Dee Dee: Tenacious D at download festival 2012

2014-08-04T15:26:00.000+05:30

Day 2 Band 3

Well, the onslaught of Steel Panther left everyone speechless. While most of the crowd remained pretty much same, there was some amount of shuffling. Some people told me previously that Tenacious D's new album is superb. To be frank I didn't check the album at all because of too much running around before the festival for me. Anyway I am here and waiting for the most rock and roll dude in the Hollywood. You have to give it to Jack Black for being the actor who knows his rock n roll better than the most people. We have already seen him do two kick arse movies on rock and roll. School of rock is easily in my list of the top 10 movies of all times. The movie pumps me up as much a real concert would to rock until every part of my body is sore.
The stage was changed with the poster of a Fenix, which is essentially a pun on penis and phoenix, the bird. As you can see from the picture below their is hardly any subtlety in the artwork, but I am big fan of such artwork. They are touring for their new album which is called "Rise of the Fenix". So they performed about 5-6 songs from their new album starting with the opening track "Rize of Fenix". Jack Black appears with a white cloak, strumming with acoustic guitars. The crowd starts clapping and there is a rise of a penis shaped bird with balls and wings made up of fire. The sound is very much like classic sound of Tenacious D, Jack Black written all over the music. While they perform this song there were boobs flashing somewhere, Steel Panther left us with a huge hangover and everyone is reaping the fruit of their glorious labour.

JB and kyle changed to plain Tshirts and full length pants, which was unusual for them, where is the fucking shorts guys? They performed Low hanging fruit as second song.
Before playing next song senorita, JB took out his phone and said,"this is the most incredible crowd I have ever seen, KG say cheese to crowd, I'll text the picture to you." Oh well I am still waiting for my text. The song has lot of strumming and jamming while a huge portion of lyrics are in spanish.
This performance was quickly followed by the Dethstarr, which in JB's words is for planet earth. But the song implies that we will be rocking on deathstar, and we need to build that fucking ship.There was someone dressed as squid on stage for some reason? I don't even know what that was about, I have no idea how that is even related to this song.
A roadie comes on stage to wipe JB's face and giving him a shoulder rub and then JB tells the roadie to get out of there. This one goes out to all the roadies for every band. So now we are seeing a lot of theatrics from JB which we have witnessed in his movies, he is taking the powerstand while finishing this song(The Roadie) with high pitch scream and making that angry funny face.
They performed another slow paced classic rock song Throw down after the roadie. The song followed with a short drum solo, which was nice to see from someone other than Dave Grohl. Dave Grohl was not touring with them this time sadly.
At this moment the sun comes out in Sky and JB says, "Gorgeous sun for the Gorgeous crowd". Loud applause at this point.
At this very point they performed another sexy song, Kielbasa. Fuck yeah!!!! oh yeah!!!! The dropping rhythm and those guitars were superb. Currently one of my favourite songs.

As if this was not enough, it followed with
A long ass fuckin' time ago,
In a town called Kickapoo,
There lived a humble family
Religious through and through.
But yay there was a black sheep
And he knew just what to do.
Holy shit, the song with DIO(*RIP \m/).
JD goes the brisk walk when he performs his part and KG sings as his dad. JB sings for Dio's part. The song ends with a long ass vibrato Rock. Rah-ha-ha-ha-hock. Raye-yayayayaye-yock a lot of strumming by KG. The band takes a bow, what a fucking performance!

So JD asks the crowd next about what is the hardest from of Rock, everyone knows it is the Metal(for all you genre Nazis, shut up!). And he asked how many of you like Metal here? Oh well!!! enough to make the whole place echo with the word Metal. He said it is a great honour to perform at the same stage as Metallica, which would play later on the stage. Playing all the cards right, JB. So they performed "The metal" next, which is different from most of Tenacious D songs, with lot of electronic guitar with heavy riffs and fast drumming.
JB: "Dude, KG looks like something is happening to our guitarist. Oh god he looks possessed". Oh My Gawd, we know what time it is? This is time for some Beelzeboss and his final showdown. JB and KG goes, "FUUCCCKKKK!!!!" and the devil goes "Yes, you are fucked and my cock you will suck!". The song I was waiting for most, fucking amazing guitars, the brief drum solo and all the glorious singing. I wish I could re-live the song again today. I seriously need to see Tenacious D soon again. I love this freaking band.
Next they jumped to hilariously titled ironic song "fuck her gently", a great melodious song apparently romantic but holy shit the lyrics. A lot of high pitch screams from JB on this particular one, I really like that style of singing, reminds me of the metal god, Robert Halford.
JB says me and my brother KG here came with this song when meeting the devil. Next song was "the Tribute", almost everyone in the audience was singing along word by word.
We looked at each other and said "OKAY"
And we played the first thing that came to our heads,
Just so happened to be,
The Best Song in the World, it was The Best Song in the World."
The song is roller coaster ride with brilliant chorus and going low with all the commentary and high with all the high pitch singing. Somewhere down the road JD goes "oh ahh rak pak gi gig gig gi gi". There are some good riffs and drumming but it is mostly singing and strumming which makes this song shine.
The hands were raised in the air clapping with the song. Someone somewhere showed more boobs(oh thank you Steel panther again).

The next song begins somewhere along JB talking, this one was called Double team. Seriously good composition with lot of complex riffs. JB introduces the greatest bass player of all times John Spiker(ok, that line is getting old) and the bass dude does some seriously wicked Bass solo.

So JB now starts talking again he says, " I must say I thoroughly enjoy rocking you, the closest the man can come to rocking is making love. Today we have made love to your ears and hopefully you will have multiple eargasms. I am satisfied and I love this entire nation." Now the Fenix bows down and there are papers coming out of the Fenix which is basically orgasming at this point. They finish with a lot of bowing and waving from JB and KG. Gosh, I am in sudden urge of seeing Tenacious Dee again.

Find of the festival: Municipal waste live at bloodstock 2013

2014-07-29T18:18:00.007+05:30

I have never in my life seen a moshpit starting before the band is even on the stage. That my friend is power of thrash and this outfit is one of the quintessential thrash metal band, which will just ram more and more thrash in your face as long as you keep chanting "Municipal waste is gonna fuck you up!". The chant was audible along the mosh pit, it was the war cry of the gig, a welcome prelude for their grand entrance. I was told that this is a pretty kick arse band and I should definitely check them out. As of now I really fully understand this band very well, but back then I had no clue who they were, what were they up to and what their music was like.
But as I would like to point out this band is my find of this festival and a very good find. I can listen to them for good amount of time. Initially their songs sounded same to me, which is pretty much true for any specialised genre at the beginning, but you need a lot of listening to find the distinction and appreciate the effort they have put in various songs. Municipal waste are comparatively newer to thrash scene and have a whole fresh take at the genre. Their songs are short and fast. In an interview I heard the lead singer saying it is hard to sing for longer duration and he don't really know his unholiness Sire Thomas Araya of Slayer does it.

Another noteworthy item is their poster and their album art is, as it looks like some kind of mutated waste containment unit or something. Pretty much all their albums are about either partying or thrashing or mutation of some kind, which is pretty kick arse theme for a band.
So I didn't know most of their song at that time and since they performed one song after another it was hard to tell which song was being played at the very moment. The performance was very tight, I was standing with my neck down and headbanging through out the whole performance, there was no fucking break.
They performed actually a lot of song for their slot time, which was in middle of the freaking day. This is list of all songs they performed thanks to setlist.fm:

Unleash the Bastards
The Thrashin' of the Christ
Mind Eraser
You're Cut Off / Authority Complex
Beer Pressure / Thrashing Biz
Headbanger Face Rip
Drunk as Shit / Sweet Attack
The Fatal Feast
Black Ice
The Monster With 21 Faces / The Inebriator
Terror Shark
I Want to Kill the President
Obama
Wrong Answer
Pre-Game / The Art of Partying
Sadistic Magician

(inc Bass solo)
Born to Party

Pretty much after every song there was a chant of "Municipal waste is gonna fuck you up". Atleast there were people who knew these guys and understood their songs. I don't remember at this point if they talked to public or what did they say. For the most part of the gig my eyes were on the crowd or just head banging. I had no idea what antics band was upto, but from most of what I can recall there was nothing much but pure thrash coming from stage and simple high octane performance.
I think somewhere in the end they performed the song "the art of partying" that is when the shit got really hyper. It is the song which have lyrics of "gonna fuck you up". This is one fucking skull crushing song and with face melting performance. The party was fucking at this zenith at this song. I have heard of crowd surfing and moshing wheel chair users. but I saw this myself in this gig. The dude was being pushed by the crowd and raise during one of the song. Totally respect worthy site, I love you all the crazy bloodstock metal head motherfuckers.
I think another song they talked about was president Obama, which was a hilarious song title but interesting nevertheless.
That was one of the maddest gig I have ever seen, the whole gig was one large thrash party. Anyway the last song they performed was Born to party, which is another great song form the album of the same title, it can be said that this is the best song to describe the band in one song. Fast, energetic, relentless and overall amazing. I was too fucking tired by the end of the gig, so I got myself a wurst. I have since then, heard these guys quite a bit and they are now a permanent addition to my thrash list.

Metaruuu: Baby Metal live at sonisphere

2014-07-22T15:20:00.001+05:30

Ohk well, this was the most anticipated band for me and quite a lot of people to be frank. Everyone was excited to see a Japanese band, which has model of a J-pop girl band and music from a Metal band. In a lot of way this sounds like something, which could totally be wrong with the whole thing to begin with. This is corporate created metal, which is just contradictory to the whole concept of rock n roll, but it might not be first band with such strong corporate backing. I mean, ofcourse ,the bands first earn name for themselves and then become a corporate entity or as they lovingly call them "sell-outs". But I don't know many Metal bands, which have been produced by label companies or other corporate entities. What makes it more interesting is that it has come out of Japan, which has produced some very good Metal bands in the past and lot of garbage corporate non metal music groups.

Anyway, the band started its performance with a good starting intro using Starwar style text and describing "how the gods of metal(Maiden, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth) wants to pass their torch to newer generation and that newer generation manifests itself as Baby Metal. They should go to Europe because all the road to rock leads to Europe". Well that was some tight marketing and packaging gimmick and I totally bought it. Everyone cheered and applauded when the band came on the stage, with musicians(drummer, guitarist and bassist) dressed in some kind of white Japanese clothes and the performers(singers and dancers) were dressed in small red and black frocks(or whatever the hell it was).

The band was not particularly bad, guitarist and drummer were tight and riffs were good. Later when these three girls started singing and dancing it was all a downhill ride for me. Not that they are bad singers, but it just doesn't fit the whole metal/brutal scene and seems like a terrible cocktail. Meanwhile I initiated a new trend with some of my Scottish and Welsh buddies of shouting "Metaruuu" at random times. To make shit more hilarious and ironic, they were moshing to the songs.
They performed following songs(courtesy setlist.fm)

At some point during performance they performed this chocolate song and all I can hear is "CHOCO-- CHOCO Letau!! chocoletau!!!!", which is my interpretation of their pronunciation. Another peculiar thing about the whole dance routine was they were making devils horns all wrong, it looked like they were making a shadow puppet sign for a deer. These girls took a break after 2-3 songs and then the musicians performed drum and guitar solos, which was a relief from the whole singing and dancing routine. They were fairly impressive lot. Later these girls came back and performed some other song which sounded like a record stuck in a tape recorder "ta ta ta ta ta.........", seriously that is all I could hear. The bunch was three girls I think two of them younger between 12-14 and older main singer was 14-16. I have heard somewhere when they get too old in J-pop world, the band continues with younger lot and older ones are fired. Seems like same fate might await these chicks in 2-3 years time.

The last gimmick they pulled out was requesting a WALL of DEATH using the same animated large screen display. I don't thing these girls could pull a request for a brutal Wall of Death directly since let's face it they are too KAWAII for that shit! Anywho, crowd was taking a piss, so there was a fucking WALL OF DEATH!!! who knew that would happen.
They ended happily after seeing the crowd response, not sure if they understood what was really going on. But I am happy that these kids were not treated badly as they could have in their first ever gig outside their home country, Metal crowd can be very difficult to please. The crowd dispersed with shits and giggles and there were few who were genuinely impressed and liked the whole thing. Each to their own.

Gojira live at sonisphere 2104

2014-07-08T15:53:00.000+05:30

This was my third Gojira gig and I am sorry that I have not written the reviews for the last two YET. I have been too lazy and uninspired to write, but may be today I will complete a few. Firstly, let me make a giant claim that Gojira is the greatest thing that ever came out of France. That is indeed a big thing to say since France has given world with many great things and have centuries of glorious history but that has boiled down to Gojira being the final French fruit of labour. Gojira combines the greatness of individual free thinking of French with technical creativity of a heavy metal band combined with deep lyrics and complex musical composition. Gojira is a perfect band, I am not sure why they are not as big as they deserve to be, may be they are too chilled out to go out and sell themselves, but in coming times they are going to become one of the most important heavy metal band of all times. The kind of band, which will inspire upcoming generation of musicians and headline massive festivals.
Anyway on Sunday morning I was hanging out with my bloodstock buddies before heading to Gojira, but I ditched them since I was super eager to see Gojira from the front lines. To make the matter worse I basically ditched some cuties just to line up first for the Gojira. We reached on time, however the arena was not prepared, there were still barriers around and it took them about 15 minutes from the scheduled time to clear the barriers and let the crowd in. To add to the silliness, we ran to the arena as if it was a train leaving the platform, it was great fun. I was shouting "SPARTANS!!!! ATTACK!!!" while running.
So we waited for another 15 minutes before all equipment were set and sound test was being carried out, we were chatting with security folks and asking if they are going to cut down the time, but they said no, but the whole day schedules would be delayed by 20 minutes now.

The band appeared on the stage with Joe Duplantier waving his hands. They didn't say anything they just started with their first song from new Album "L'Enfant Sauvage" the song was called "Explosia". This is the first song of the morning for me, the double bass from twin bass drums were just exploding in my face while Joe running around the stage. I had opportunity to see Joe from 2 meters or so, but I couldn't capture him with the camera because he was running around and not staying in one place. This man is a master vocalist in league with Randy Blythe and Mikeal Akerfedlt. Well given this is Gojira, it goes without saying every blast beat follows a massive mosh pit and windmill headbanging. For me starting this day with such massive metal boner was just icing on the cake. The second song was also from the same album it was called "The Axe", I couldn't tell the name of the song but it is pretty distinct song and you know the riffs and drumming is damn amazing. After finishing the song, Joe came to the mic and asked if everyone is doing well, he is so mild mannered and well spoken that you would never take him for a vocalist of Brutal death metal band, (well not really, most of them are gentlemanly) but this guy has a whole different air of sophistication. He said they are not going to waste any time talking and started "backbone" from "From Mars to Sirius". The song is pretty fantastic song, I haven't heard it many times to be frank, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying and headbanging to the fullest. He said, this next song is dedicated to the Death Metal fans, I knew what was coming next, THE HEAVIEST FUCKING MATTER OF THE UNIVERSE, one of the greatest song written in 2000s. The mosh grows larger, my windmill goes faster and each double bass and lead makes it all much better. Every hand in the air raising horns to the brutality that was ensuing. Lead guitarist of Gojira was hanging out mostly at the back of the stage playing, however the bassist was in front most of the time. He has those side burns which are so fucking amazing, I wish I can grow it like him, I have tried it in the past but not to great success. To make matter a bit more sinister, Joe announced another beauty "Flying Whales". The crowd went absolute mental with this song being played. This is a crowd favourite in England. To be frank I don't know lyrics of the most Gojira songs by heart, but this is one song which most people were singing along. I must admit at this point Gojiras drummer is an absolute beast, the dude keeps the speed and tempo to the maximum. Though he is one of the most under rated drummer of current generation, I can easily compare him with likes of Chris Adler, who is easily the best drummer in this generation of Heavy Metal drummers.
And this is not even all, the next song was "L'Enfant Sauvage", this was getting better with each song. Absolutely phenomenal performance. Crowd was roaring with joy. Those sophisticated riffs were just pleasure to the ears and the drum thumps were thrilling the whole body. The last two songs they did were from the album "The way of all Flesh", which is my favourite album. They performed "Toxic Garbage Island" next, which is always the next song in my playlist after my favourite Gojira song, so I am pretty used to this one. The last song they did was "Vacuity", another highly energy filled performance. I enjoyed every bit of the performance. Joe was talking about getting another album soon and coming back to us again. I cannot fucking wait to see them again. The greatest start for a morning I can think of. Well there is more to come for this sunday if I get down to writing more.

tl;dr

2014-04-24T03:58:00.001+05:30

It has been a long time since I have written anything tl;dr. I will soon muster enough courage to come up with some utter nonsense and talk about it in length. Though in the end it will just add more futility to the effort itself. I might even get bored in the middle and start talking about something completely important and the triviality might not even last for that long. It might actually be more useful piece of crap ever written by me thus contradicting the very purpose of carrying out the whole exercise. But who knows,it was indeed the purpose of text to pretend to be pointless and masquerade itself as gibberish, while speaking about intelligent things with audacity and voraciousness. But it might not be inline with the general ineptitude of being able to do something for a long continuous period of time. The distractions offered while creating such long monologues are far too tempting and it is particularly hard to carry on without being pulled into something else, which requires lot less effort and much less attention. This instant gratification providing medium is thus more important than the one which requires me to keep talking about pointlessness and relish the delicious fruits of labour of thousands of years of hard work done by humanity. These hedonistic ways are true essence of the civilization and they should be accepted and devoured without having reservation about their unsavouriness. While I might just keep piling more random shit over previous intangible shit, it might not be a total waste of effort and time. In the end it might turen out to be a true ploy to attract the relevant audience towards this topic and not worry about the consequences or direction of where this might lead. The worth of all this is just mere pastime or an epilogue to a glorious babble to follow. The action speaks louder than words? or do they? Actions don't speak, they don't have sound or words. They are mute, it is meaningless banter like this, which is loud and is more audible than other, perhaps more important things. So, as it can be seen here that the text continues to be elusive and does not talk about anything of any value to any living soul. The pretext remains totally unknown and the conclusion is abrupt. The ever flowing stream of entropy continues to dominate the very fibre of this discussion. But there is hardly any discussion here, it is all a discourse of trifling significance without any meaning or goal and it continues to do so relentlessly. It renders no results, it achieves nothing and it makes no change to anything. But, here it is written on the whims, for it is but a journey of mundane bullshit.

This is Nirvana live @ Intrepid Fox London

2014-02-04T17:56:00.000+05:30

Sapota took out his ten year old Kurt Kobain Tshirt just to wear for this occasion. This was nothing like ceremonial or anything but old fashioned nostalgia.

For some reason Sapota thought the gig started at 7:00 pm and rushed to the venue, but on arrival it was clear the gig was not until 9:00 pm or later. Anyway, found some like minded chit-chatters talking about old school Grunge and Sapota flaunting his Old Nirvana Poster.

Anyway these guys started somewhere after 9:00, they looked like dudes in their 20s, and the dude on vocals for some reason had similar hair(blonde) like Kurt, but I am not sure if that was his real hair colour.
Anyway, they kicked off the gig with Aneurysm and followed with a whole lot of song ,but Sapota can remember following song and in no particular order. They performed Smells like teen spirit,Penny royal Tea, Heart Shaped box, Come as you are, Rape me, All apologies,Polly, Lounge Act, Drain you, The man who sold the world, Where did you sleep last night and lot of other songs.
They were overall very tight, in fact tighter than Nirvana itself(No, you did not just say that?). But then we know grunge has limited appreciation for technical accuracy so it is all immaterial. The vocal dude was playing leads and he was pretty good at it. They changed bass player and drummer for one song each but Sapota cannot recall which song. Sapota sang along most of the song he could, but to his surprise sapota was unable to recall lyrics or was at times unable to recognize even the aforementioned song from the intros. In between when they were playing some of the lesser known songs, Sapota was wondering if they are gonna do any of the above, but it is not surprising that without popular numbers you cannot woo the crowd. Overall it was a good old nostalgic fun. There was some dude who was headbanging as if it was a heavy metal gig. As much as Sapota appreciates a good headbanging, he was surprised at the choice of the music for this young enthusiast. But Sapota told the chick standing next to him that he would like to have whatever the handbanger dude was having and the chick chuckled, Sapota is such a womaniser!!!!!
Sapota was easily pleased with the song Where did you sleep last night and Rape me, it was done so well. They finished with Lithium, never realized that this song was such a powerhouse for a live performance with rapid drumming and fast guitar picking. The fun continued after the gig, the place was crowded. Sapota went to Maoz to get falafel at that very ungodly hour but Sapota is not ashamed of this conduct.

Lamb of God totally killed it @ Brixton Academy

2014-01-24T16:36:00.000+05:30

Ok, This time I was about to miss this gig thinking that I have seen LOG twice already and I know the drill so very well that it won't hurt. I will be fine without seeing them and boy, I was so wrong when I thought I have seen the best of LOG. When I arrived at the venue the line was really really long, probably the longest I have seen for any gig. I have changed my telecom service provider from O2, so I cannot use special jump the queue and join the priority queue either. Anyway after seeing a lot of people passing by us, when I finally arrived at the venue this band called as Huntress was performing. I saw it from a distance before moving into the zone, I was not impressed at all. Though I have heard good things about the band, so we moved closer to the stage, but I was still not all that impressed. When you are in the crowd the vibe catches on and you start enjoying a bit more, it is all contagious. Well to be fair the singer of huntress is pretty damn good, she can pull very high notes. Most metal lead ladies have impressive vocal ranges, but it is easy for ladies to pull soprano ranges and this one in particular did that shrilling sound with a lot of vibrato when she screamed about witches!!! She carried on singing in very high pitch for a long duration, it was damn cool. Technicalities asides, I still cannot get myself to like it; I mean I do not like big players like Angela Gassow or Cristina Scabia and I absolutely hate bands like Nightwish and Delain. I donno why I cannot find female vocalist as kick as Janis Joplin, Debby harry or Joan Baez in Metal scene. They just don't stand out any more.

Anyway huntress were alright for their kind of gig, they did couple of songs before they did a song called as ¨I want to fuck to.... death" which is written by Lemmy himself and the singer described it as "how fucking romantic!" With loud screams and a lot of thanks you and flying kisses the huntresses finished off. The next on stage were Polish death metallers Decapitated. For voice check the vocalist shouted ¨123Slayerrrr" and I was like did he just..... And then for sound check they played Pantera's walk. Entire auditorium was singing ¨Can you see I am easily bothered by persistence." My god! I knew this is going to get fucking brutal. Ok now a note on nuisances caused by scene teenagers. While I am up for some quality moshing, I am also a believer of moshing with proper moshing etiquettes like mosh with people who are moshing and don't shove and push everyone around who is just enjoying the show. But this show as full of teenagers whose primary goal in life is moshing after getting hammered, I believe some of them have not even tasted alcohol before in their lives, but hey this is the time to just annoy everyone and act like a dumbfuck. Decapitated performed an electrifying show, they are very technical in nature and absolute tight. I can tell by the music that this band is some very serious shit, the double bass and bass lines were fucking brilliant. One thing which was uncommon was a lot of pre recorded musical interludes, where they disappear from stage and appear with a lead and drum solo few times during the while performance. The lead singer has really really long braids, such that they were hanging lower than his knees. With consistent headbanging you know they are a useful weapon in death metal gig.

Anyway, at this point I was standing in the second row and in the middle of the stage. I knew it was a bad idea in general but I thought I would be fine with some pressure and crushing but second time in a row, I couldn't have been more wrong.

After a lot of chanting "Lamb of God!!! Lamb of God!!! Lamb of God!!!" the stage was darkened and Chris Adler was first to arrive and followed by guitarists and then Randy, who happened to have a beard for some reason. Never seen Randy with a beard. Anyway they kicked off with Desolation and the crowd went absolute mental. I was kicked, shoved, pushed, trampled all at the same time. I somehow thought God, I am going to faint with this much pressure. I had no chance to headbang or do anything I was just being thrown from one spot to another. With next song Ghost walking the crowd became a bit better but as soon as that double bass, leads and scream kicked in, the same thing happened again. I decided to go with the crowd and move away from the centre, but there was no fucking escape. I had no control whatsoever over my movements or my position, everything was on mercy of the crowd. This is first time I have seen how brutal the LOG gig can get, I mean I escaped this pressure in Download and bloodstock, which have much more crowd. But here I was surrounded by half naked teenagers everywhere, whose primary business today was to cause turmoil in the gig. I was running out of breathe and sweating like a dog. Anyway after the song finished Randy introduced the guitarist Paul waggnor from ¨Between the buried and me¨. He said Morton couldn't be here because of a family emergency and for Lamb of God we always maintain Family first and band later. People cheered as it always works in this part of the world. He asked, So how many of you have to work tomorrow? some people raised their hands and some shouted. Well, you know how does it feel to go to work everyday, it is like "taking a walk in hell". So the next song they performed was Walk with me in hell. For me it was quite close to being in hell, since I was still in midst of moshing insanity, which was not stopping even after two songs. Next song was hourglass, which started as soon this one finished without much delay. This time I was a bit outside the pit, I was close to the stage but still in first three rows. Randy started talking about how much he loves England and talks about how England is first country which recognized Lamb of God outside America and everyone of you is fucking Mental. The next song started with those damn Drums, which were shooting blast beats and double bass like an Apache helicopter gunning down with bullets and missiles. This song is called Set to fail, it is set for constant non stop headbanging with insane speed. This was first time in my life when someone's hair were hitting me when the dude was doing the windmill and now I knew how does it feels to be on receiving end. I was still nowhere in position to headbang properly, but I have let myself let freely float in the crowd and move my head and body in rhythm of crowd, it was like I was part of this gigantic cruel wave assimilating metalheads like pacman eating dots, it was majestic. I don't have to balance myself, I don't have to position myself, I don't have to worry about getting hit or fallen, it was all automatic. It was so wonderful that I felt I can live in this euphoria for a long time.
For some reason the whole band went inside and there was no light and it felt that this was bit too early for an encore, but everyone starts shouting Lamb of God!!! Lamb of God!!!. Randy comes back with "Now you have got something to die for". The crowd was a bit less violent now, I can headbang with the right rhythm and pace. The moshpit was still very active but a bit smaller. This time crowd was creating a wall, close to me, I wanted to be a bit away from it. As soon as the drums go wild, people starts running towards each other, just hitting and pushing and all kinds of adrenaline driven craziness. Randy asked the crowd again, how is everyone doing? and crowd howled. Randy was like you guys are so fucking awesome, we love you, this next one is called "undertow". I was utterly tired at this point, I enjoyed the great riffs and screams and insane drumming heavily. It was all a great treat to enjoy in this overcharged sweaty environment.
Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of themselves without that law is both. For a wounded man shall say to his assailant, 'If I live, I will kill you. If I die, You are forgiven.' Such is the rule of honour. With almost everyone repeating the word, the song kicked off. It was thrilling to hear this brilliant song live again. The song progresses slowly and goes into state of consistent frenzy and then drops down and continue its pace to dive again into bursts of euphoric drumming and singing which can only be justified with headache causing fast headbanging. To make matter more sinister, the next song they performed was called "Ruin". Motherfucking roller coaster of a poem written with drumming so genius that it will make the Devil himself ask the question, "who the fuck is this Drumming Devil?" Ladies and gentlemen that is Chris Adler for you. Despite him being so scrawny looking, the power packed by this piece will blow you like a grenade thrown right onto your face. I was perspiring like a marathon runner after completing the entire race, with my heavy jacket and this kind of entropy it was hot as hell inside the hall. They performed another song called as In your words following the Ruin without any break. I rested for the most part of this song, it is your usual LOG song, nothing special about it but nevertheless a good song. They all gathered around and start throwing sticks and plectrums and starting thanking and shit. I was like woah, they have not performed a hell lot of signature songs, what the fuck is happening?
Lights went out and some kids were starting to slip away, one of the biggest problems with extreme metal moshpit crowd is that they exhaust all their energy and enthusiasm by the time best of the lot is still not not over. I was waiting here and even the chants were not as energetic as you would expect for encore. Anyway they returned back after a bit of time. Randy started talking again about how awesome the England is and then he talked about the band huntress, which is from LA and touring with them and said they have the only good looking member in the whole group. Then he talked about Decapitated, who are from poland and one of the best and most respected act in the whole death metal Genre. After a bit of talking Randy asked how many people want him to shut the fuck up, LOL! The next song they performed was "Vigil", one of my favourite songs, after seeing them three times before, this is first time I have seen them perform Vigil. Oh the starting line of "Our Father thy will be done" and then the second line "We have denied this life its worth" and the drum and guitar that follows with every chorus. This was sex served on a toasted crumpet. Totally Loved that song, every second of it. Randy's intense singing and simple riffs and complex leads makes it my absolute favourite. The song followed another classic "Laid to rest". All songs were performed with absolute brilliance. Randy now stops and starts talking to the crowd. First he asks how many of you are from London? and how many of you are outside the London? How many of you are England? Then he points at John Campbell and asks him if he is from England. John was like NOO!!! Then he says it doesn't matter where you guys are from, but you guys are bunch of Rednecks!!! This when all the hell break loose. Entire crowd goes into the berserker frenzy, with first drum beats the heads starts rolling like a propeller the push the shove and the trampling is all back. HOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS A MOTHERFUCKING INVITATION!!!!! THE ONLY ONE YOU WILL EVER GET!!!!!!!! HOOOOO!!!!!!!. With each beat blasts the moshpit gets crazier and crazier. One of the best experiences I ever had in a rock concert. Inspite of this feeling of getting exhausted and passing out, I was still performing with all my reserve energy. This songs makes you believe in the devil and how has he blessed Chris Adler with skills that makes most drummers fade in comparison. The wall of death was closing in as the song ended and I was somewhere at the periphery of this unstoppable brutality. At the end of the song, someone dressed as panda was crowd surfing. The bassist was pointing Randy towards Panda, who kept missing the panda, but they were laughing like crazy about the whole panda thing. I thought that must be it, but the next song was Black label. This was getting totally unholy. The brutality was not not stopping, it was just getting stronger and stronger. It was just ridiculous how good this gig was getting by every fucking song. But I knew this would be last. The headbanging continued inspite of the fact that I couldn't feel my neck and my throat was hoarse, I didn't had any fluid in last few hours and I was drenched in sweat. I stood there in order to get either a plectrum or something when they finished. It was like a breather after the dust has settle after a monstrous battle. As I was leaving the place, I was thanking the devil as he has shown me the right path to actually come for this concert inspite of the fact that it seemed a bit too much to watch LOG for the third time, but it was best 19.50 £ ever spent.

Mammaries of Heavy Metal: Steel Panther at download festival

2013-06-07T17:34:00.000+05:30

Day 2
Band 2
Warning: Very very Not suitable for Work

Well, Liny was telling me that this band is pretty good and she saw them some times back and they do put on an amazing show. I was under the impression they are one of those 70s glam rock/hair metal band,s which do make up and sing in high pitch voice. I was not sure what I was up for since the band's poster looked like this.

So these guys started with a short intro piece called as "In the future" followed immediately by their first song "Supersonix sex machine" and they start rocking like real good. I was looking at their attire with my disapproval: shredded shirts, pink/red glasses, arms full of tattoo, leather pants, multi coloured hair and lot of blingy accessories, they looked pretty camp. But it was about the time when my scepticism changed into giant smile when someone flashed the first pair of breast for this performance. The lead singer immediately pointed towards the woman who was gracious enough to entertain the entire crowd with such candid display of those gorgeous mammaries. I was starting to like the sound of the band as both the lead vocalist and lead guitarist were singing.
As soon as the song finished lead guitarist took the mic, for a minute I thought he was the lead vocal. But it so happens that his supporting vocals are bit more prominent compared to others.
So, he started :"What's up donington, how many people have seen us live before?"
Crowd roared a bit.
"there is an airplane right there"
"say fuck you to airplane"
Crowd: "fuck you airplane"
Lead guitarist: "they can't hear you but who fucking cares!"
"let me introduce the lead fucking vocalist Micheal Starr , he is like David lee Roth because David lee Roth has pretty small penis"
Micheal: (*whatttt*)
Guitarist: the dude rocks 24*7 and he fucks girls motherfucking half his age, and last week he was fucking a 30 year old girl.
Micheal: "fuck you!!!"
Guitarist: Make some noise for Micheal Starr(*drum rolls*)
Micheal: It feels as good to play here as fucking a girl after doing cocaine from her pussy. This is great day because it is a grand opening of this girl's pussy.
Guitarist: Dude, I saw Metallica going there there before, so wear a condom.
Micheal: Why wear condom you cannot get herpes twice?
Micheal: ladies and gentleman on lead guitars Stachel, who is faster than Edward Van Halen.
Satchel: (*Nods with a NO*)
Micheal: better looking than Ben stiller.
Satchel: THAT IS TRUE(with drum rolls)
Micheal: Skinnier than Yngwie Malmsteen!
Satchel: Everyone is skinnier than Malmsteen.
Micheal: Retarded than Tom Cruise!
Satchel: REALLY?(disapproving pout)
Micheal: Put your hand up for Satchel.
Satchel: This is fucking awesome, biggest fucking crowd we have ever played for. Make some noise for that chick over there who is about to show here boobies, you dirty whore, later I am going to put my penis in your vagina. I am not going to wear condoms because I cannot get anyone pregnant since I went through menopause.
Micheal: and on bass guitar this gay looking dude, ladies and gentleman the foxiest bass player in the world Lexxi Foxxx.
Lexxi: (*waving to crowd*) THANK YOU!!!
Lexxi: I want to thank the guy who invented razor so that ladies can shave their Vagina.
Satchel: if your hands are not up for shaved vaginas we cannot help you.
Lexxi: yeah, when we go down there we don't want to wrestle with ZZ top there. And how many people like to go to the Zoo
Micheal: dude, you have one track mind!!!
Lexxi: and the best drummer in our band Mr STIXXXX!!!
Stix plays a little drum solo, which was not bad I would say.
Next, they played one of the non popular song called as "Tomorrow night". The song was not too bad, it was only interspersed with liberal display of mammaries. As soon as the song finished they started talking about hookers and which are the best hookers in the world. As I noticed there were few people who were wearing Japanese straw hats in the crowd, which was theme for the next song, which goes like this:

Asian hooker Hot little motherfucker Asian hooker You're a dirty little cocksucker..............
Micheal(*in the middle of the song*): Make some noise for Satchel on the leads.
which was followed by a really good solo performed by Satchel, who was also licking the guitar in between!!!
Micheal: Make some noise donnington.
Song finished with quick riffs by Satchel. Out of all weird things I have seen at download festival there were teletubbies in the fucking crowd!!! Micheal: Ladies please up on the shoulders, please show some fucking boobies.
And bam there were two girls making out on top of two dude's shoulders.
Micheal: We have seen a lot of boobies,how many of you want to see some more? Cameraman please capture the boobness as it unfolded.
Satchel: Guys if you want to have sex, be safe! 'cause in England the minimum age is 13 years old, no younger than that.
Satchel: Show you tits you whore! (*surprised* ) Woah, that worked! I never thought that would work . Everyone loves Asian hooker, but nobody loves them more than a little guy called as Tiger woods.
With a particularly interesting guitar leads the song they performed was "Just like Tiger Woods".Boob flashing continued with some display of inflatable dolls and dildos. There was one particular lady who was bare chested throughout the whole damn performance and she had Scottish flag painted on her face. Kudos to Scotland for having such candid ladies. Song finished with a great double bass and lot of wah wah pedals.
Michael: Now we are going to do this next song about the relationship we had for two weeks. Satchel come over here. Satchel: dude, I just got my hip replaced this week, don't want to walk down all the way over there because it fucking hurts like hell
Michael: This song is called "Community property".
I would give you the stars in the sky But they're too far away If you were a hooker, you'd know I'd be happy to pay. If suddenly you were a guy I'd be suddenly gay 'Cause my heart belongs to you My love is pure and true My heart belongs to you

And the crowd sing:
But my cock is community property!!!

This was so Brilliantly done, that I almost clapped(no clapping at heavy metal concerts, only Devil horns!). And then there was a chick who has "community property" written over her titties, that was just icing on the cake. The song finished with atleast 10 pairs of male and female boobs being displayed on the Gaint screen.
The next song they performed was "Eyes of a Panther".
Satchel: Dude, who likes to party? Because I like party all day.
Michael: Dude, and I like to fuck all night.
Michael: Everybody fuck each other. And the next song begun this one was called "fuck all night and party all day" and in middle of song Michael shouted "boobies" and 5 more pairs were flashed. One particular chick was being reluctant and she got thumbs down from Michael.
Michael: Everyone say fuck fuck fuck yeah!
The song finished with everyone shouting fuck fuck fuck, LOL.
Michael: Camerman take the camera right there to those great pair of boobies. Make some noise for those amazing pair of boobies.
Satchel: Everyone thank her dad for letting her sit on his shoulders. Thanks dad, Later I am going to fuck her face.
Michael: Everyone thank you for you coming to the show, we started here in 2009 and we wrote a song about a little back stage experience we had.
Satchel: We lined up 29 girls and fucked 16 of them in a row and took a nap between 17 and 18. We wrote a song about that. Check it out.
Satchel starts with a Great fucking riff.
Michael: Everybody fucking jump JUMP JUMP.
Well, I was ofcourse jumping, it was a great tune, how could you resist it?
The song they performed was "17 girls in a row" with great bass guitar by Lexxi. And in the middle of the song Michael made a shocker hand sign(two in the pink....).
As soon as the song finished Satchel started talking again.
Satchel: dude I have a great news I went to the doctor for aids test and he said everything looks positive, but that is not the great news. We have a special guest here tonight with us, Corey fucking Feldman from Slipknots.
Michea(*disapproving*): Not Corey Feldman , Corey Taylor you fucking asshole. how many people want Corey to beat shit out of Satchel.
Satchel: I didn't recognize him without his mask.
Corey comes out and joins them on stag. I was surprised to see a totally normal looking dude with Motley Crue T shirt and a regular cap. He started this new song called as "Death to all but metal",
......
Fuck the Goo Goo Dolls, they can suck my balls
Everybody shout, "Heavy metal's back!"
Fuck Mariah Carey, death to Sheryl Crowe They can kiss each other on the camel toe
...........

Fucking brilliant song. That is all what heavy metal fans ever wanted to say. I have to admit as much as I dislike slipknots, Corey is an amazing vocalist. I was laughing my ass off during entire song marvelling at the lyrics Michael: Make some noise for Corey Taylor.
Did everyone had a good time with steel panther?.
Thank you very much everybody. He reintroduces all the band members, they get together and bow to the crowd. I was awestruck by this stellar performance, the band is definition of having a good time at rock n roll concert. Not to mention the amount of wonderful display of female bosoms all over the place. I did count upto first 30, then I gave after I realized that there were atleast 50 more pairs flashed later.

Trivium at Download festival: A review

2013-05-20T16:11:00.002+05:30

Day 2: Band 1: Trivium

On the second day of Download when we reached the main arena this band called as "Black Veil Brides" was playing at the main stage. The band members were wearing very odd outfits. The lead singer was wearing some kind of sleeves, but no shirt and these sleeves were shiny and black. Then there was paint on his lower torso which seemed like it is coming out of his butts? Then other member were wearing something made up of black feathers. Musically I have no idea what they were singing or what were their genre. I was generally amused by their theatrics, but the crowd was booing them and flipping birds at them. At this point, the lead singer thought it was a good idea to engage with crowd. So he started saying stuff like, "you motherfuckers think you are so cool?", "you guys give hard time to our fans" and "we are here for our fans, and you all can go fuck yourself(or something like that)". I shook my head in disapproval because it was a terrible idea to insult a crowd composed of drunk metalheads.People kept booing them throughout their entire performance and then these guys left with a lot of swearing at the crowd. Entire thing was super hilarious. To be frank, these guys were pretty shit and their attitude was even worse. They should have stick with their performance and left without saying shit to the audience. Anywho, the next band in Line was Trivium. I don't listen to Trivium much, I have heard few of their songs and I liked one or two. I got introduced to trivium through the sound track "like flies to the light" from the movie smokin' aces. The song has very typical growling with beats and shredding guitar which sounds pretty badass until the singing goes into the clean mode, which ruins it completely for me.
Anyway, the performance started pretty normally with their intro song called as "Capsizing the Sea" and they were displaying album art which looked some kind of explosion on the screen . The guitarist came on stage doing his antics and singer jumping around. The first proper song they performed was "In waves", which I have never heard before, but it was pretty well done. The next song they performed was "Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr" which is one of their popular numbers. The guitar solo is pretty good on the song however it changes track between growls and clean vocal which in live performance do not sound that bad. The vocalist was pretty cool dude, he talked about how the band was first recognized here in the download and he loves the British crowd. To be frank he was right, the crowd in download was pretty responsive and enthusiastic about them and Trivium is a decent band so they were getting decent crowd response.They performed next two songs one after the other called as "Rain" and "Black". I was a bit excited about black, there was bit of chorus which lead singer asked everyone to join in. There was a lot of energy in the performance. Next these guys asked everyone to form a huge mosh pit and if anyone falls pick them up. Well, that was new since it is pretty much understood but mentioning it is not such a bad thing after all. They performed "the Deceived" next which was again an unknown song to me followed by "Dusk dismantled". It was all very groovy and good stuff, I was enjoying the music in general. Next they started talking again about this next song and they wanted everyone to go nuts for the song. "The gunshot to the head of trepidation" is their constant fixture at most gigs and a pretty good song. Some of the lyrics are sung by the lead guitarist who is tall guy who wears wide parallel trousers compared to tights by rest of the band. The leads were pretty sick on this song, the song was followed by small drum solo. I was not all that impressed by drums because of their generic sound but they were still pretty tight. They finished with a whole lot of rapid drums and guitar typical of signature songs. The last song they performed was "Throes of Perdition", which was again a pretty tight song but I was totally clueless about it. They finished with "Leaving this world behind", which is mostly a closing number played in background. Overall I liked their performance,they were fun band to watch, I hope to see them again sometimes.

Camping at Download

2013-01-24T19:28:00.003+05:30

Download festival 2012 part 1

I was already a bit late for booking any hotels for the download festival, so I had no choice but to get a camping ticket and consequently get the whole camping gear. I am as clueless as it can be about pretty much most stuff but camping is a whole different territory for me. So, I started searching for information. My first spot was Download forums, where someone pointed me to camp loner. After joining their facebook group and digging some posts I knew that I am up for some serious research and consequently shopping.

First thing you need to get for camping is a tent. Finding a tent can be tedious. I started searching for the criteria to select a tent. Here is a list:

Occupancy : Always have a bigger tent than the number of people occupying the tent, for example for a single person a double tent is better because you need to put you stuff inside the tent.

Weather: Since this is England and it pisses like there is no tomorrow almost all the time, so double sheet tents are ideal. You also need to ensure that tent can withstand high winds, but that is mostly dependent on how many ropes and pegs you use for tying the tent to the ground.

Ventilation and warmth: The tent should be able to let you breathe and at the same time, given you are in europe it should not let too much cold air to get in. This basically helps you to sleep without covering your head. Mosquito nets on the tent entrance can be pretty sweet addition.Anything and everything else beyond this can be customized to different requirements.

So after going through a lot of shops and visiting a lot of website, I finally selected Gelert Eiger 2.

Next thing on the list to get for the camping is a sleeping bag, generally you would like to buy something to keep you warm without spending too much money so I quickly selected Lichfield Trekker. Additionally this bag can also cover your head(if you want that!).

Third thing on this list is Mat, now I was torn between buying something inflatable or a flat mat, I was also worried if I would need something which is waterproof. This has lot to do with the fact that ground is(may be) totally uneven and your preference for cushioning for the bed. Back in India I have no issues with sleeping on ground with little cushioning, but due to super cushioned beds in England, my back is now used to cushioned beds. However, I still just brought a simple NATO olive mat, mostly because it was cheap and my room mate(who is an ex soldier) said I would be a sissy if I get an air mate.

Now you need few more things like waterproof jacket(s) and Wellington boots(or gumboots), I spent about 20 £ on each. Although it later turned out wellies were totally worth it and I lost the jacket during Black sabbath performance without even using it once. I also brought carabiner hooks, water bottle, thick (or trekking) socks for wellies, quick drying non odorous towel, Torches or flashlights, batteries, waterproofing spray, car battery charger, few ropes(in case I have to tie my tent tighter, don't get any funny ideas here), foldable stool(which was a total waste) and some other miscellaneous items and toiletries.

I started hoarding food, mostly a lot of haldiram(Indian food brand) snacks, fruits, chocolates etc. After arrival of my tent, I tried opening and tying it up so that I know how to tie it up and how big it is. It is important to give a trial to your tent before the actual usage. I also tried putting my mat and bag inside the tent in order to check the space. The tent was designed in such a way that until unless the place is completely flooded(or about 10 cms of water) there is no way water can get inside the tent.

I booked national coach to the Donington castle along with the locker at the download site. I reached Victoria coach station about 9:30 am and waited with the other metal fans for our bus. Unfortunately this was the quietest bunch of metalheads I have ever seen. All of them were sitting silent throughout the journey or whispering among themselves. At arrival near the Donington castle the traffic was getting stagnant and we spent a hell lot of time just on the road near to the bus parking lot. I forgot to mention that even while the bands were starting to play at the festival on 8th, people had already left for the festival on 6th for camping and other activities in the village. While I (un?)officially joined the camp Loner, I was in the group of last arrivals at the camp loner. I had exchanged my number with couple of people including the most interesting of the lot Miss Liny, who was coming all the way from the Amsterdam. I was getting updates from these people about the camp setup and their whereabouts, while I was stuck in the traffic. As soon as I arrived near to the entrance of the festival village, I changed my shoes to the wellies because it seemed my shoes wouldn't survive that kind of mud. At the entrance they provided us with the wrist band after usual frisking and ticket verification. This wrist band has to be tied at all times. Immediately I entered the so called festival village and started to have a look around; the village had all sorts of things including food and merchandise shops to information kiosks to Swings and comedy club. However to reach anywhere you have to wade your way through atleast half a foot of mud. I started traversing my way around to find out the "yellow camping area", which everyone else was camping at. Liny called me to inform that she has already reached and waiting for me. As usual I wandered a bit before finally finding my way to the yellow camp. Apparently there were two yellow camps, just next to each other, It took me a while to figure out that she was at very end of the camp. Finally I met her and my first guess was, "Is she Sri-Lankan?", it later turned out she is Tamil.

Anyway, we set up our tents, while I misplaced my tenting hooks underneath my tent(later to be discovered at the night). The camps were way more organized than what I expected. There were overhead flags and banners to provide direction and sense of Landmarks. Each of these camps had their own information booth, security and snacks/coffee booths. But it was hard to find out your own tent among the swarms of tents everywhere because pretty much every kind of possible tent was there. Inspite of me trying to memorize the pattern, I almost always have difficulty in reaching the right spot without getting pass it atleast once. The best and worst part of our camping location was proximity to the toilets. I wont say these were the worst toilets I have ever been to, but you cannot expect much in such situation. There were no issues with water availability in the area. Some toilets even had toilet rolls and hand sanitizers!!!

Liny told me she is doing her second masters(Whaaa???) and she is on tight schedule for just one day to see Metallica. I have to say she is bit more nuts than I am. I missed big four because of my not so tight schedule at uni last year and here she is running to another country in middle of some important assignment. From now on, she became my partner in crime. I tried texting and finding others but with no luck, some of them have already gone to the performance area, while others were still setting tents.

After doing a bit more inspection of the area and securing my music player in the lockers, we headed to the performance area. I desperately wanted to see machine head again, but to my dismay they had already performed by the time we reached. There were multiple stages including Ronnie James Dio stage, Marshall stage( the main stage) and few other small stages. The area was swarmed with people, there were multiples of tens of thousands people there. These stages were absolutely freaking monstrous, nothing of the type I have ever seen live. Multiple display screens everywhere, huge arrays of sound speakers, lot of the promotional booths and camps and barricades placed at multiple stages. One of the interesting thing I forgot to mention here is that distance between the arena and the camp was almost 4-5 kilometres. We were travelling this distance with few inches of mud everyday couple of times, not to mention our boots used to get stuck in the mud every now and then. However there was a small patch of concrete road between village and arena, walking on that concrete road was more irritating after walking on soft mud for hours. On one side of this road there was some sort of Donnington exhibition hall, seems like that area is used for more than just rock festivals. When we reached the main stage, Chase and status were performing on main stage and Nightwish were performing on other stage. To be frank neither me nor Liny has tiny bit of interest in watching any of them. So we kept looking around and got ourselves some food. There was all kinds of food available at village including vegan food(lolwat?). Next Prodigy performed on main stage and the Slash on other stage. I watched the prodigy for a bit, but here is the thing as much as they sounded good on their recorded songs, they sound pretty shit live. I didn't even bother to worry going towards the slash. Anyway, I won't be reviewing any of band performances in this post, this post is dedicated to 3 days of fun and exhaustion at the camping site.

We kept wandering around the performance area to check other small stages and look for more food(In my defence, I was very hungry). Near one of the stages there was this really really elevated ride, which basically makes you feel zero gravity(not technically, but almost like it) and there were chicks(or dudes?) screaming on these rides. Now coming to people(or as I call them rock devotees), there were all sorts of people in crowd right from the children to middle aged to all kinds of ethnicity. One of the most diverse crowd of people I have ever seen in my life. While I was standing near the locker, I met this guy who travelled all the way from the Brasil and I was awestruck by this tenacity. I mean if I don't repay the favour by travelling back to the Rock in Rio, I would be damned. There were dudes dressed in skirts(yeah right) and dudes with full punk pink mohawks and chicks dressed as pikachu. I don't even understand what were the purpose of some of these dresses in a rock festival, but pretty much every bizarre( or otherwise not so bizarre) attire was there, I mean I felt like I am the most normally attired person on the earth in such a colourful crowd. After making all these obeservations we returned back to our camps travelling all the way in the mud. The worst section of the mud was sludgy one near the common areas like the lockers. It took us 20 minutes to get across few feet at this location. Liny was getting stuck more often and had to be pulled out every once in a while, LOL. While we were on the road back to our tents, there was this guy standing in the middle of the road dressed with cartons and shouting "I am optimus prime, give me free hugs", LOL. And then from nowhere another dude starting hugging him shouting, "Optimus, I am your father", LOL. Then we also came across few chicks, who were rolling in the mud and laughing. I can only theorize that they were high as kite. Well this ain't her but this should give you an idea.


Meanwhile at Download 2012

We were dead tired when we reached back to our tents. We chatted for few minutes before retiring. I cannot believe I managed to get few hours of sleep and woke up only when the temperature inside the tent started rising in the morning. After deciding which all bands we are going to watch, I headed to find other camp-loners in the yellow camp, after a lot of texts and misdirections(for atleast 40 minutes) I was able to meet Ryan, who was trying to contact me since yesterday. Soon after meeting him, I also met Shawn. Shawn took us to the site where rest of the yellow camp loners were camping. I spent some time exchanging pleasantries with the rest of the group. These guys had no plans of going to arena any time soon, but Liny wanted to get her seat booked in the front row. So I headed back to our site along with Shawn, who was camping close to our tents. After having our breakfast Liny and I waded our way through shit tonnes of mud to get to the arena. Thankfully it was not raining, however it was overcast and the mud has become a bit more solid thus resulting in much more effort to make our way through. The arena was not all that crowded when we reached, so we made our way towards the front rows easily. Infact Liny was standing in the very first row near the barricades and kept standing there all the time. I on the hand kept wandering around a lot to get food and drinks. On these multiple screens around the arena they were either showing previous performances or interviews or you can send a text message to be displayed on the board. Text messages were very funny ranging from quotes from the movie "300" to invitation for sex, marriage proposals, jokes, lost and found. The most common shout during entire download festival was "Spartans, what is your profession" and chants of "huu huu huu" followed all over. Download has it's own internal jokes as well, number 836 was being called upon all the time and as I came to knew he was a security crew member and he basically showed devil horns in previous year's festival. Later after finishing of our day at Arena we made a little detour towards official Merchandising shops. Apparently there were atleast 3 shops, I wanted to get something besides a Tshirt, but I ended up buying a Black Sabbath Tshirt and Linny bought a Download Tshirt. Due to all this standing and walking all day long, I was having trouble walking back due to blisters in my feet, but we somehow managed to get back. I guess I slept immediately after coming back to the tent. Next day Liny has to pack her pack bags in the morning and leave. Unfortunately for her she couldn't see Black Sabbath. After her departure, I headed to place where other yellow campers were hanging out. We sat there for a couple of minutes chilling. Later at about mid noon we moved to the arena where a lot of awesome bands were suppose to perform today. We grabbed drinks and food and sat down a bit far from the area and the crowd. I met another guy who was working for RAF. I talked to him about selection procedure for RAF officers, which seems a bit relaxed compared to IAF selection procedure. But as he pointed out that India can afford having wider selection criteria due to the sheer numbers. Anyway, while we were sitting enjoying the sun, there was a group of hot girls snorting white powder. While the girl in white skirt was pretty cute, I thought it was a really bad idea approaching a pretty stoned girl.

As soon as the Anthrax hit the stage, I moved towards the centre of the arena, while others kept sitting there and enjoying the weather. After the end of all the performance on that day i.e. after Black Sabbath finished, I texted these guys and we met back at the yellow camp. I bought some Indian snacks for the Clint, who seems to enjoy hot/spicy stuff. I also brought my music player and attached it to a mini speaker. We kept chatting and sitting there at the last night of the festival, while these guys were drinking JagerMeister(or some cocktail thereof). Weather was fantastic at this hour and Ryan was making plans for the next visit while pink floyd was being played in the background. I was returning back to my tent after saying my goodbyes and I saw some drunk(or high) chick climbing on the flag pole and security guys were trying to bring her down. The response of the security guard to this situation was absolutely hilarious, he said "As much as I like to see girls getting up on the pole, sweetheart come down, this is really dangerous." Some kids in a big group were shouting in unison, "Spartans, What is your profession" followed with the shouts of "aahoo" and rallying around the yellow camp. When I returned back to my tent, I realized that the headquarters of this Spartan army was right next to my tent. Apparently these kids called themselves as "Party boy Spartans" and wanted to invade other countries. At times they were also talking about pissing on other tents, which made me a little worried(I don't want to carry a pissed tent back home). There is nothing more dangerous than the piss drunk teenagers at a rock festival. Although they were funny especially everyone was talking with same odd accent and talking about dining in hell and for whatever reason they were obsessed with obtaining bread for their quest. Anyhow, I managed to get some sleep in my tent for the last night in the Download festival. I I woke up at time, packed all my stuff with relative ease and walked my way towards the Bus stand. The first thing I did before boarding on the bus was changing from the wellies to proper boot. My feet thanked me a tonne for this act of mercy on their soul(s). The journey back home was very quite, this time it was purely due to the exhaustion instead of lack of enthusiasm. With so much gear, I was getting a lot of curious looks everywhere in underground and overground. I was too tired to be bothered with anything but thinking about my bed. I slept for hours as soon I returned to my bed. I can certainly say this is one of the greatest experiences I ever had in my life. I will write band performance reviews soon(I know I have not been upto it lately).

Metal God seen live

2012-06-12T20:48:00.001+05:30

Since I didn't book the ticket online, I didn't even know that I would make it inside. But, where there is will there is a way and as soon as I reached Hammersmith few blokes were selling tickets in black. I enquired the cost which started with 100£ and on some bargaining came down to 50£. I was surprised with such steep haggling especially in the UK, but I didn't bother buying even at this price. I bought GA ticket for 45£(original cost being £43.5), but I was worried if this ticket is actually authentic? When I reached the gates, the bar code reader took quite long to validate the ticket, which was making me a bit nervous. But Wohoo!!! I was inside! I went inside the auditorium, which is an indoor one much like O2 arena in Brixton. There were not a lot of people inside when I reached, so I managed to get as close as 2-3 feets from the main stage. The band performing at the time was "Kobra and Lotus ", to be frank I have never heard about the band. The lady singer was singing with high pitch screams , bit too loud and shrilling for my taste(or may be it was the sound system?). Anyway, I was very hungry, so I went out searching for food. While having my sandwich I noticed that crowd was bit older and more alternatively dressed compared to the most gigs I have been to. There were people in 40s, people with a lot of tattoos and people with lot of metal jewellery and leather clothing. But I was not surprised this is what Judas are associated with anyway.

As I returned back this band finished its performance, and the stage was being reorganized for the next band. The next band to perform was the Saxon, this band is contemporary of the Judas and these guys had preformed together for quite some time. The band was being cheered well and surprisingly by a much younger crowd. The band was pretty tight and performed about 10 songs, sadly I haven't heard any of them before. The band offered choice to crowd between two songs, but it was hard to make out what crowd actually chose. Saxon also made an announcement that they will be at the Download, there were few hands in air when they mentioned the Download. So, It's apparent that I am not the only dude obsessed with metal mayhem. Saxon finished with a great cheering from the crowd.

And now the stage was covered with epitaph curtain, while the band crew was setting up the stage. The crowd started screaming and some dude started the chants "Priest!!! Priest!!!", which didn't lasted as long as you would expect. The feel around the place was very electrified with metal crowd getting closer to the stage and entire floor was getting crowded. The lights went off and they started playing "War pigs", crowd started singing along the war pigs. Inspite of being fully aware of the gig rituals, It was stil very exciting and I was anticipating some surprise. The bright halo at the Devils fork on Epitaph screen was getting prominent while the curtain was removed to reveal the entire crew. My eyes stopped right at Rob, who was wearing sunglasses and a long jacket with so much metal attached to it that it would even make the most brootal scandanavian band feel like a little girl. Rob was singing far from the crowd and facing sidewise to the stage, which is little unusual for most front men. The new guitarist Richie Faulkner was right in front trying few guitar antiques. I was trying to find the Guitar lord Glenn Tipton, who at that moment was modestly playing on right hand side. The background screen was showing British Steel while they were playing "Rapid fire" as the opening number. The song ended with Rob's signature high pitch scream. The second song "Metal god" followed immediately. It took me a while to recognize the song and I started singing along. With every scream the sound goes louder when the chorus goes "Meeeetaaaaaallllllll god!!!".

Now Rob start talking about Judas priest style heavy metal, the crowd screams "fuck yeah!!!". Rob was now wearing a denim jacket for the next song which crowd sang along with him for the most time" and we are heading out to highway and I got nothing else to lose". While faulkner was soloing, Rob stood next to him sticking his tongue out, lol. The background screen changed to "Angel of retribution" and faulkner started a great lead while Glenn Tipton stood in his typical metal rocking style. The screen this time went animated with a lot of lightening while crowd chorusing for "judas rising". The next song they played was from album sin after sin called as "Starbreaker", which I have never heard before. Rob's dress changed pretty much with mood of song and this time he was wearing shiny long coat and boots with cowboy spurs. The trio of rob, richie and glenn stood right at the front edge of stage while Ian hill was pretty static in his right hand corner.

The classic infamous double lead kicks off the next song "victims of change" from album "Sad wings of destiny". In the middle of the song Lord Tipton performs a face melting solo. The song lasted over 11 minutes and drummer Scott Travis was doing his stick in the air thing while beating snare brutally. And crowd was going "ho ho hoooooooo" with the chorus I raised both my hands in the air showing devil horns, I was completely spellbound. The song ended with signature screams and each beat followed a dry ice bursts from the stage.

The next screen change was for Rocka Rolla, the first and my fav Priest album. I was very excited thinking they will play either of the first two songs, but instead they played "Never Satisfied". It's a very classic metal track and I was not expecting it to sound heavy. Rob Halford starts talking about this song which they try to do it differently every time meanwhile the stage was set for an acoustic or unplugged song. Richie Faulkner started with the acoustic guitar without percussion and Tipton providing some basic rhythm. Later Travis played only the high hats and tom tom while rotating the drum sticks with fingers and throwing them up in air. They were playing cover of Joan Baez's Diamonds and Rust. Later a full lead guitars and heavy metal drumming kicks in, the transition was amazingly smooth. I tried to sing along with the rob, but it's hard keeping up with master. The next introduction was from the album "Nostradamus" called as dawn of creation followed by the actual song "prophecy", for the most part I can only hear the word "nostradamus!!!", I was staring at the 3-D spherical Nostradamus display most of the times. At the end of the song, Rob was dressed in full Silver color cloak holding the Judas' devil's tuning fork and sparklers were set off from this trident. It was Spectacular!!!

Now stage have two Judas Priest's devil fork on each side, the song was sounding astonishingly familiar but I couldn't recall the lyrics at the moment. Felt like killing myself for being so unprepared for the concert. Richie Faulkner directed the crowd to put hands in the air, while Rob Halford was going on with a voice over. The ambience for the song was red lighting with focus on forks with yellow halo. I realized by now the song is called Night crawler from Painkiller. I must admit metal crowd is pretty amazing, there was this older(compared to me) couple standing next to me. This dude picked up the Nepalese girl up on his shoulder because being short she was struggling to see anything on the stage. Such generosity and spirit makes metalheads pretty fucking cool. Although turbo is not a great song, but lets face it, it's an easy song to remember and crowd loves it. The dude standing behind me was not pleased by it, but I sang my heart out with the song.

Rob now talks about classic heavy metal and it's origin in UK, to which there was a big "woooo" from the audience, he then kicks off next song beyond the realms of death. The song starts with slow tempo and picks up with a lots of fast riffs and beats, with quite a lot of variation in tempo. Rob was sweating heavily, so he stood near to those dry ice vents, lol. The song ended with all three guitarists doing judas style headbanging stand, just fucking unreal. I have completely lost my mind in this great series of freaking amazing songs. The next song was something I always dreamt of watching live. The amazing opening riff by Glenn Tipton and following lead by Richie Faulkner was just directly hitting the center for madness in my brain. I was singing and headbanding like crazy with every riff and every beat. Sworn to avenge, condemn to hell, tempt not the blade.. fear the sentinel.............. Rob halford, ladies and gentleman is greatest heavy metal vocalist of all times, period. There are very few who can sing like him, though he is not his prime, but for the most part he is still godly good. I was too busy headbanging and showing devil horns as a mark of my gratitude, I didn't bother to look at the stage.The next song they played was from album "Ram it down", the song is called "blood red sky", I was resting my neck after the mayhem from the previous song. This song is comparatively milder even the vocals are in lower octaves. The great vocal prowess of Rob halford is very noticable in this song, he continues to amaze even at this frequency. Faulkner on the other hand kept crowd engaged with his guitar antics. The song ended with a lot of fire coming from vents on stage, This was my first show with any pyrotechnics and being quite close to stage, I can feel the actual heat. The stage now turned to green and Rob starts talking about the Judas performing in 37 countries and for over million fans and he thanked Priest's amazing heavy metal fans calling them the life support of band. The next song was cover of Macwood Fleet's Green manalishi. The crowd was screaming along "oooooo ooooooo ... " with halford as he asked everybody to sing.

The display screen changed back to British steel, Halford started talking about the great heavy metal journey of NWOBHM bands like Maiden and Motorhead. With each name there was increasing uproar in the crowd. Rob then walks with a badass-style thumping the micstand on the stage. And the next thing you know is... shouts of "Breaking the law" and repitition of "breaking the law" for many times. As soon as the guitars riffs and drums kick in the crowd goes nuts, entire fucking song is sung by the crowd, not a single word by Rob Halford. This is one of the most amazing heavy metal anthems and this was a great moment to witness it live with the home crowd. BUT BUT, this was not it, Judas were on the killing spree, the Drum solo by Scott Travis was easy to recognize by it's pattern and I knew what is coming next. Scott travis is an insanely talented drummer who is not so widely known. For a minute I thought he was a new drummer, since he looks quite young. 4 minutes of amazing drum solo which would soon convert into one of the greatest song ever written in the history of heavy metal. Oh the great opening riff which I have heard countless times and insane drumming followed by Rob Halford's high pitched vocals... Faster than a bullet, terrifying scream.... This is the pain killer..... I was banging my head violently, while there was a mini most pit somewhere on my right. Again, I was too busy headbanging, so I didn't bother to look up except for that skull blasting Glenn Tipton solo, which is pretty much faster than the bullet(pun intended). What a great rush for every milisecond that my brain can resolve in each and every note. This was turning out to be most awesome set list I could imagine.

Entire band left the stage besides the drummer, who asked everyone to chant "Judas Priest", this was the first encore to the show. The band resumed with next song "Electric eye" with Hellion intro. The screen displayed an animated eye looking at the crowd while crowd sang in unison. The song finished with Travis going berserk with drums and Richie Raising his guitar in air. Fuck Fuck Fuck!!! Rob halford comes back with his bike on stage engine roaring...vroom vroom vroom, which could mean just one thing. Glenn Tipton plays 1 minute engine firing leads followed by the distortions from wah-wah padels. This day couldn't get any better. Rob Halfords starts singing Hell bent... hell bent for Leather with a leather stick in hand and fully clad in leather clothes. And again, there was a small mosh pit forming just next to me, I was quite stuck to avoid the most pit but luckily the mosh pit didn't quite reached near me. I was exhausted to the point that I have to stop to breathe while singing along, but it was such a great thrill. Richie faulkner was playing guitar with teeth and hitting the guitar on wooden steps, while Glenn touched his guitar to the ground and started jumping with it, ha ha! As the song finished Glenn came forward and raised guitar towards the crowd and I Bowed with double devil horns towards him as part of my respect to my favourite guitarist. I thought may be this is the end of the show, but crowd was not moving at all. Rob returned back with his classic biker hat still on and started singing "hey hey" while audience sang with him. He continued this 2 minute long audience vocal warm up, What a great showman!!! and what a great command over the crowd. The next song they played was "you have got another thing coming" from "screaming for venegence". The song halted at about 3 minutes and turned into richie faulkner's 4 minute epic solo. I must admit he is fitting into gaint shoes of KK downing very well and that too in his own style. Rob returned with union jack wrapped around shoulder while singing ... you got another thing coming... in baritone ranges, while audience echoing the line.

While this was the first time Ian Hill came forward throwing guitar picks and Scott Travis giving drum sticks to a fellow from audience. Other members left the stage, but for the last encore Scott Travis went upto the drumset and started talking in his american accent about the DVD for this concert. The crowd started clapping with drum beats. The troupe returned back with another classic from British steel. This time the background changed to Judas priest united and Rob Halford was wearing denim jacket with Metal God written on it, how fucking appropriate!!! The crowd sang most of the song.... living after midnight rocking to the dawn.... then I am gone..... I sang as much as can since by this time I was exhausted to the limit. As the song finished band gathered together and Rob halford came with his badass walking stick with a motherfucking skull. The band bowed toward the crowd. I was clapping with both my hands in the air. Entire auditorium was chanting "Priest" "Priest" "Priest". Rob halford stayed for a while along with the chants and made a saluting gesture towards the crowd. I had no idea weather this is the real end or not. But as soon as the auditorium lights were on and another non Judas' song started playing on speakers, I started walking with the crowd. I sms'ed one other Judas' devotee that this is the best fucking heavy metal concert I have ever attended. I was so tired and hungry, but the sound was still resonating in my head. Probably this will not die any soon as I am heading next to Download festival. \m/

From Profile Photos

A walk in Camden town

2012-05-14T04:50:00.000+05:30

It has been a while since Sapota had a rack of Black Tshirts and NOW is the good time to revise the lost glory of metal days. Since the Festival is coming in few days, It's high time to start getting in the mood. So Sapota found about "Camden town" as one of the places to find stuff related to as-they-call-it "alternate fashion". We started strolling in the place somewhere in the afternoon. It all looked like a place where sapota assumed would find cheap T-shirts and pendants, which he was looking for. Manish was there just for the company, he didn't have any plans to buy stuff, but that would eventually change. While the skull rings and pendants were about 15£ onwards, the Tshirt market was more reasonable.
We started looking at Tshirts with guitars and dragons and skulls and ganja leaves, which were moderately priced from 10£-20£. Manish immediately made up his mind to get a Big bang theory Tshirt. While as usual, sapota was zeroing the places which can be visited again. The best Tshirt sapota found was Slayer Tshirt, which he will eventually buy, but hey, we never carry cash!!!

Next we moved out of Tshirt market and went to shops where sapota brought a jacket, which was not the plan for the day, but the salesman was pretty good and he made it sound like a great deal. Now we moved to places where we can look at the bongs and other smoking equipment, some of them was pretty wicked and some have multiple filters. Manish ended up getting something called as "black mamba", which is new stuff for him. As we moved further, there was a small market around the river( or lake?) with scooter like seating arrangement. As soon as we entered the market the turkish lady was selling something similar to parantha but with feta cheese. The food was delicious, we spent some more time strolling around food place and got smoothies for ourselves. There were a lot of different cuisines to try out, but mostly it was all street food and it was rightly priced. There were a lot of different kinds of jewellery but mostly gothic or punk stuff. We then went into this gothic shop, which has one of the most amazing collection of gothic stuff. Sapota found two good Tshirts, one gojira and one messugah, but the price was too high in comparison to the fact that same stuff can be bought from internet for much lesser. The highlight of the shop were sales people, who were completely dressed in full gothic costumes.
The market was flooded with leather stuff, rock merchandise, black corsets and leather pants and similar stuff. There were some more shops of antiques, interiors decors, painting and other stuff. We were going around very fast to cover as much as we can, but we couldn't see other place. Manish was specially happy at this place and want to visit it again and sapota agrees. We returned back to Tshirt market after the visit from ATM to buy Ganja and Slayer Tshirt. We also checked out the equipment which was made up of a police mask(the one you see in apocalyptic movies), we couldn't buy that stuff due to it's awkward size and difficulty of carrying it with us.
Out of all places in London, sapota highly recommends this place as worth visiting which includes food, the general feel and shopping. The day was quite eventful, but sapota, while returning home saw three people dressed as Batman, Wonder Woman and Batgirl(most likely) wondering if day could have been any more eventful than this?

An Overwhelming night with Opeth

2011-11-15T14:22:00.001+05:30

I have always obsessed with finer details when I have to go for the concert and made elaborate plans for entire thing. The idea of missing a concert due to any number of circumstances gives me a cold feet. While I came to know that Opeth are playing at O2 academy on this very Friday, It occurred to me that I may be able to attend this. On wandering a little online, it was clear that I would be able to get tickets on the gate or I can still book on-line. There is something about a rock concert which makes you plan it and there is some kind of preparation which gets you into the right mood for metal concert. I was little indecisive on this one since I have to return back to my city late at about Sunday midnight and as always there are safety concern regarding roaming at night in London. And to be frank I had zero preparation to attend a gig by The Opeth. Anyway, my confused mind decided "what the heck", lets do it.

So I quickly made it to the venue, which was not hard to spot and purchased a ticket quickly by cash. Reaching to O2 academy was not really much of an effort and nothing interesting happened until I purchased the ticket. There were few people queuing at the gate, others were just hanging around the venue casually. So, I thought lets go somewhere to eat or take a stroll. I was very happy until this moment, and that is when everything went wrong. I was thinking of keeping my ticket from back pocket of jeans to somewhere in front jacket, but I couldn't locate the ticket, my heart almost stopped beating at this point. I was going like "no way dude, you cannot loose it", its one of the times when you remember god, no matter how rational you are, times like these make you loose your shit. I was extremely angry on myself and then I started looking for ticket around. Couple of guys were selling tickets around those area, now I do not want to allege anyone of anything, but it seems to me that its possible that one of these guys nicked it from my back pocket, as it was quite easily visible. I tried searching and I talked to the people at ticket counter, but there was nothing which could be done at this moment. This is where my engineering senses started kicking in and telling me to get a good bargain and save the money, you have already paid 20£ why again? So while I stood up in the line, I was looking for those guys who sell ticket and luckily(don't want to use this word at this moment) I found a bargain for 15£, which is not bad, but I lost my tickets so I was still a fucking loss.

Anyway, I decided to join the line, but bloody hell, line was so long, it was about a mile or so. Finally when I was standing in the line, the cops were frisking an african male for something and everyone was looking at it. Now line kept moving, until I reached about 100 meters from the venue, it started getting chilly and I put my hoodie on. For some reason, I was asked to stepped out of the line by the cops for frisking, which made me panicky all of sudden. Clearly, it was racial profiling and the cop said that they were looking for guy in grey jacket, which is funny since no one wears a grey jacket to a rock concert besides me, of course. And he tried to act funny and crap, but it was my fault to put on hoodie in London and wear a grey jacket. I tried explaining him that I am not from here and its hard for me to bear this kind of cold. This event almost ruined the night for me as it kept haunting me entire time. I was repeatedly replaying the entire event in my mind to figure out what all did I do wrong here? and it was hard for me to keep a cool head about it.
Anyway, I made inside the gig venue, there were two levels in O2 academy, I was in standing circle and there was some kind of seating arrangement at upper level. To be frank, who the fuck sits on a chair in a metal concert? I mean if people were buying tickets for such arrangement at metal gig, they should rather sit home and watch corrs or something. Anyway, venue was great, inspite of being enclosed, I didn't have any concerns for sound to be frank, I know they would have done their homework properly unlike India. The stage was well lit and there were these banners and drum kits, which were covered by some kind of cloth. I was not sure why the stage has such strange arrangement since it looked like some kind of obstacle course.
So by 8 pm, the stage went dark and this was the time when you know the band will appear on stage. So I heard that familiar sound, ah the sounds from a live snare and distortion of metal guitar, great feeling of metal nostalgia. I have been hungry for live metal music for more than a year now. It punches a big hole through my heart that I have missed Cradle of filth, Lamb of God, BIG Four, motorhead and Gojira, all of them were at pretty much reachable, but life played a cruel trick with me. I wont say that this band( which appeared on stage next) was particularly a bad band, but it was not the kind of band, I would have spent my energy on, call me what you want, but I was here to see Opeth. I have enough gig experience to know when not to do rituals and save energy, but today this dry patch of metal in my life was taking its toll and my body was automatically responding to every beat and every riff. The band that performed next was called Pain of Salvation from Sweden. Initially my mind wanted to believe that this be Opeth because I don't want to wait. But they played a pretty tight set of songs. The lead singer was also playing mix of lead and rhythm with some acoustic guitar thrown in. The drummer was pretty tight. Vocalist said couple of time "they did not fuck up on stage, so they wont do it this time as well". It was pretty interesting to watch them as I read about them, there are around for a long time now but they are not so popular. However they put up some ass kicking guitar solos and then a good drumming solo for very small period of time. I guess this crowd was bit of a mixed crowd so they would have made few fans here.
After they leave, the sound engineers and other people started uncovering opeth posters and the wall now have a big art form their latest album heritage, you can read about the artwork and album here. And these guys were testing drum kits and putting in plectrums in mic stands and some guys were testing the guitar processing unit. It took them about 10-15 minutes to finish it off. And the stage went dark again, and I was having this chilly feeling which you get due to too much excitement. This time the crowd seem to be getting a little denser, the italian chick standing ahead of me seemed to be little lost in all this. So Opeth made an entry in dark with their opening number form new album called as "The Ghost orchard" frankly speaking I didn't recognize that song since I have not heard their new album at all. But the sound of a progressive metal band is so distinct that you immediately attach yourself with it. And crowd was getting into the metal zone: headbanging, smell of weed, air guitar, devils horns, screaming and howling was complementing the great music which was playing. Mikael Akerfeldt, the lead vocalist was wearing a red Tshirt, after first song, he introduced the band and shared usual pleasantries with the crowd. Next song they played was "I feel the dark". This song is one of the most amazing song I have heard, Micheal Akerfelt's vocals are amazing on this song. The song is very typical example of varying time signatures used by opeth. The song ends with an amazing echoing voice.
So now Mikael starts talking about "how he want to see some singing with next song and want to see some breasts", lol. And then he says that can't help it he is a dirty old man and don't worry you all will get there, gosh I love this man's sense of humour. He said next song is from album "still life", which made me little happy since I knew the next song will be "Face of Melinda" and I know this song a little better than previous ones. I must admit, they rendered live pretty tightly, given the nature of music achieving such level of accuracy is work of art. New guitarist Fredrik akerson is pretty amazing, his guitar solos on all three songs were spot on. My hands went up in air and showed my respect with devil horns and my head banged throughout entire song
The next song blew away my mind completely, this time they played "porcelain heart". The guitaring was fucking insane and then the song finished with a epic drum solo followed by another crazy face melting guitar and drum combinations with double bass and blast beats thrown on and off. The crowd was roaring and whistling and clapping simultaneously, it was a life time experience. Its not often the metal heads clap, but bloody hell this crowed rocked no matter what it did.
Then Mikeal talked about the whereabouts of each and every member of band, guess most of the band is from Stockholm, except for one guy who is from some village in Sweden.The next song they played was napthene from their new album Heritage, the song starts with very gentle riff and then drums starts progressing slowly and Mikeal started singing. And then there is complete transition with keyboards thrown in,and song picks up speed and then slows down again. The colours on stage started changing with the riffs and drums, its was site worth witnessing, beats and transition was hitting every cell in your brain, enhancing the senses.
As soon as the song finished, the set up of stage started changing and I knew that this is time for some acoustics mixed with metal sound. This is something which you will see rarely in metal concerts. Now Mikeal starts talking again, this time he says that this song has no standard structure and this may take may fuck it up a little and he then says "would you guys be okay if we fuck it up a little", crowd screamed in agreement. To which he responded "good, because we don't give a fuck anyway", and there was giggles and laughs all round. He said this song is part of sound track of God of war to which crowd responded with uproar. The song "throat of winter" was really a bit unusual but it was pretty good song and his guitaring skills are pretty amazing even on acoustic guitars. He then started strumming "faith by George micheal", and crowd responded to it by singing with it, that is when he literally did *FACEPALM* and says you guys suck, lol. He then started to introduce Akerson again by telling that his guitar has 12 motherfucking strings, I gasped in awe by the idea of 12 string on an acoustic guitar. I raised my hand to show my respect by showing devil horns. The next song they performed was credence, oh the sweet familiar riffs and a great opening. My entire body was enthralled by the great ambience that this song has created around me.
And then before you could recover from this song, the next song came flying right at you and hit you with such a force. Oh my god, this is probably the song I was waiting to hear live. Every fucking note resonates in my mind, the closure is probably one of the greatest song sung by opeth and its hard to describe the epicosity of this great song. My headbanged for entire song and the visceral vocals of Mikeal were intoxicating "In the rays of sun, I am longing for the darkness" leading to epic drum and guitar solo, man I felt totally out of this world, the moment was something which you can never forget.
As the song stopped Mikeal started talking about his friend from katakonia and stalker dude who took his picture and thought it was him. he says he wont mind lady stalker, but not dudes (ha ha). Next song they played was slither, which was good song, but I was still under the influence of previous song. This song was fast liked speed metal with some great riffs. Then he talked about the year he was born, it was the time when sabbath released their 5th album and asked the crowd if anyone born in that year, I guess only 2-3 people were of same age as him. He than talked about Ronnie James Dio(\m/ respect) and asked "how many people like him", and there was uproar in crowd devil horns in air. He then said that he is biggest fan since he as coffee with him, which he later said is not the reason to be his biggest fan, but he then dedicated this song to Dio which was A fair judgement. Indeed a great song for a great man, respect to Mikeal and Dio.
After finishing this song he started strumming again and this time he sang with it "shit cock anus", it was absolutely funny. And some bloke made some random comment on that to which Mikeal was like, "shut up man" and thus creating more laughs. He then played some riffs from other band and talked about Whitesnake, the crowd responded to this song with more screaming. The song I think was "Slow and easy", they played some intro before they break into full blown metal mayhem that is called a Hex Omega. The song has characteristic heavy drumming with a lot of metal guitaring, the lights on stage were again flipping with different colors. Mikeal Akerfelt has amazing voice and he does high pitch singing so well, its mesmerizing. But, he didn't do any songs with growls, which is my only complaint against this concert. The Guitar solo on this song were pretty sick, I was totally awe stuck .
Now they started thanking the crowd and bowed down and went back.
This is an epic crowd, so it did what it does best, started shouting and chanting opeth opeth opeth, the time for an encore. It was funny when crowd started shouting 10 more songs after encore and Micheal blew them apart by shouting back "10 more pounds", it was absolutely hilarious. He then started talking about this entire encore thing and "how its a little game we all play". Man, this dude is amazing on so many levels, I am in total awe of him. The next song they played was Folklore, the starting of this song is very much like a folk song, as told by Mikeal that its a swedish tune. With heavy heart I have to walk out of this song, I cannot believe that I was walking away from 7 more minutes of face melting music. Something I have never done before and I felt like a sinner to walk away in middle from the lords of progressive metal. With each heavy step, I walked towards the gate and then music completely disappeared. I pulled my self back to run towards the underground to catch the next train back to my accommodation. I felt so empty that entire time until I sleep, Every moment of concert was replaying in my head and I wanted it not to stop. This concert has triggered my hunger for more metal, but I have to wait until next year for some real music, until then the emptiness of live metal will be surround me.

the cynical connection

2011-10-05T19:42:00.000+05:30

Sapota do not care about these terms or putting him self in one of these categories, But for sake of knowing new words he do familiarize himself with these terms once in a while.
So the question here is "is sapota cynical?"
Well, not really, he is not there yet.
Does he want to be a cynic?
No not at all, but is it really a choice?

Here is the thing, from the outset he was never anything closely related to cynical and he tries hard even today not to be one. But as he knows more about the world and as he interact more with the world it grows. Its a sad thing that it cannot be escaped, he will be a bigger cynic in coming future.
he does not want to assume anything about anyone's motive, but finding inherent good in others and pursuing that belief is becoming harder and harder day by day.

The intelligent school of thought says its good to be informed than to be betrayed. But when Sapota looks back at younger people or people who do not know the dirty secrets of the world, they seem to be blissfully in love with the world. Whereas the so called know-it-all are grumpy and skeptical even about the simplest of the things.
The other day sapota was talking to someone younger to him in age and she talked about oprah, and good philanthropist work of Oprah. And sapota just went on his usual rant on how its about business and be-fooling everyone. He has not researched about the stuff much because he doesn't really care about it. But in popular culture, she is often joked about as being uptight and glamorous. Perhaps, there is a lot of good charity work at the core of all this. But, sapota simply wont be absolutely convinced of anything. And that is when she(the friend) pointed out that sapota is just being cynical. Not that sapota was not aware of this change which slowly taking place, he was unprepared for this and he was a little awakened by it.
We have our own sense of maturity and being responsible and we tend to forget the great things about life. No one is absolutely good or bad, but we base our decision on 1 bad deed of other person and just paint the entire resume with it.
Sapota tries very hard to maintain his "look everything with good in it" perspective and don't question the underlying motives, don't try to read between the lines and don't try to over analyse it. But with one bump on this road, he immediately puts on his cynical goggles on and see everything with question marks in it. Everyone says you can not live life and be successful if you act simply on what you see, you have to dig deep. Whereas digging deep is not necessarily bad thing, but what are we looking for? And in honesty, with the cynic glasses sapota doesn't look for treasures, he looks for skeletons.
Is this behaviour unjustified, is this just overdoing it? well, no. Sapota have seen a lot of so called beliefs shred to pieces, the people who appeared to be saints turned out be devils. The falseness of this world is so monstrous that until unless you are deep rooted with your firm beliefs, you will be absorbed. You have to weigh everything and perform a quality check on it.
To sapota cynicism is merely a word and he wants it to remain that way, if it touches him, he will be unhappy. What will it bring to him? supposedly it can be a good companion for survival, but it will make him miserable. It will feed you, but you will remain unsatiated.

Wolverine or Magneto

2011-07-10T19:11:00.007+05:30

Its a futile to even think about killing Wolverine. And its stupid to think he will die, Until unless you are Lord Magneto. For many years Sapota has been a Logan fan, to the extent that he sometimes poses with the imaginary claws and call others as "bub". Sapota's interest rose from the movies, he haven't read any comics until recently. So Hugh Jackman had been the logan,the badass which initially was face of Wolverine. On the other hand, Sir Ian Mckellen is very impressive, but he gives no competition to wolverine as Magneto. Though in second movie when he lifts the entire bridge, its one of the most impressive moment in the history of comic book movies. For many years wolverine( jackman's persona) was the cool one, the hero with the attitude, magneto was still under his shadow. Though Sapota knew that wolverine got nothing on magneto even in the series. Magnus( in movie) told logan that he better stay away because he can destroy logan without a thought.
Now the next series sapota came across was xmen evolution a teenage take on xmen. In this series logan is even a much bigger badass. For the first time it felt jackman can't capture the total awesomeness of wolverine. At the same time magneto appeared to a much stronger character and much much poweful mutant. Entire team of Xmen is useless against this one mutant. He is much much wiser and have leader ship capabilities and intelligence rivalling of professor xavier. Logan on the other hand is troubled mind single dimensional killing machine personality. Though he is a shrewd fighter a total badass, but not much of a character which will inspire a lot of awe to everyone.
As sapota watched the good old original awesome series of 1992, that is where entire perception of xmen is altered. That is where you meet the most awesome of Magneto and much better logan. Logan have a lot of personality conflicts and a lot of issues with his past. He is still the same ruthless maverick who just throws himself at any danger without caring much about himself. Even in this series logan have a very little personal life, its widely known that he had major love interest in Jean. Unlike Xmen movies, scott is not some pansy boy, here he is pretty much the leader what xmen should have. Magneto on the the other hand have an aura of someone like a president of a country. He is awe inspiring, he motivates people, he calls mutants as his children. On top of everything his mutant abilities are way beyond most other mutant.
When sapota read polls from wizard magazine magneto was rated best villain and wolverine as best hero. As much as sapota loves wolverine, he still don't think wolverine is the best hero ever. Besides he is pretty much an antihero.
To discover more, sapota read House of M, Deadly genesis, Messiah complex and other related comics. The awesomeness of Magneto kept increasing with each comics. Its strange thing that most series sapota have came across are more related to magneto. But one one the biggest conclusion(which may be partial) is that Magneto is much more of three dimensional personality as compared to wolverine.
Magnetos skills and capabilities are on much much larger scale. He even have three ultra powerful kids. Wolverine commands a respect of lot of fellow mutants, but Magneto is worshipped by an entire country of mutants. His tactical, strategic and diplomatic moves are much ahead of any other mutant, even charles is not that shrewd to command an entire race of human beings. Magneto is driven by the philosophy and motivations much much bigger than any of his personal reasons. Though Erik has horrible past, but he has turned his rage and anger into creating a dream not just for himself but for entire homo superior. But, What makes logan a lovable character is he is fearless, there have been very few times in long history of Xmen that wolvie was afraid of anything. If they were to recruit him as lantern, he would almost be as strong as Hal Jordan.

Now looking at his powerlevel, Magneto can manipulate electromagnetism to atomic level and on higher side he can lift an entire planet. He killed an entire city with one thought and created wormhole to travel across great distances. Wolverine on the other hand is indestructible, he is one of the best hand to hand combatant adept in every marshal art known. Admantium claws make his supercool plus allows him to cut anything and everything.He is very intelligent when it comes to ambush or attack plans. He is a very skilled battle tactician but he is merely an alpha level mutant.One of the biggest moment in comic book history is when Magneto goes mad in anger and rips off all the admantium from wolvies body proving his superiority as mutant. The kind of moment that sends chill across any fan and every xmen character. And funniest part is he goes on rampage lecturing about how foolish logan is.
At this point sapota has developed more liking for Erik Lensherr as compared to Logan mostly because of superior powers and intelligence. And Erik as a character has much more dimensions. Probably sapota need to dig more comics with logan's story lines.
The new movie first class has established Erik as one of the strongest fictional character ever to brace the silver screen. Micheal fassbender has been a pretty good magneto(though nothing like 1992 series) and Mathew Vaughn have presented the character in his full colours.

lets kill them.

2011-05-31T17:00:00.009+05:30

PART 0

A: shall we kill someone?
B: What?
A: I mean how bad could it be? There is nothing bad about killing? people die all the time, killing will just be another medium to achieve it?
B: But why would you do that?
A: I am not saying we should just kill anyone?
B: so you are going to choose someone?
A: Yeah, potentially deserving candidates.
B: potentially deserving candidate? are you mental?
A: No, I am perfectly sane, Its a plot for a story!
B: Right! A bloody plot to you?
A: Look, we have this normal life which is perfectly all right in all senses. But we still crib and complain, Why not just correct it?
B: Correct it by killing? That doesn't make any sense.
A: Let me give you a bigger picture. If perfectly executed, killings will occur in different locations under different circumstances. And by the time investigation reaches a possible outcome, we can safely reach a number and this number will be proportional to the delay in each murder.
B: OK, Lets assume you can evade being caught.What are the chances that you will be successful in executing these plans and no one will know about it?
A: None, The plan is to find out 10 perfect candidate, study them and kill them while they are totally alone and send a message with each killing.
B: What? are you a serial killer who gives clues and messages?
A: ummm
B: Wait, you are trying to be a vigilante.
A: More like justice delivery girl.
B: and the candidates?
A: Corrupt politicians with records of charges against scam and history in general crime.
B: OK
A: Policeman misusing power, taking bribe leeching general public. Public servant crippling the weakest and poorest. Some sort of money lenders to farmers, who sucks their bloods from interests like a pest. Lawyers who save politicians, criminals, who have no moral fibre. A journalist whose life is dedicated in bringing misery to innocent victims of misfortune. A fake celebrity, who is linked with crime and exploitation the naive. A child rapist, who has gotten away because of loopholes in system. Son of a rich businessman who ran his car over people who were sleeping on footpath and raped a foreign tourist.
B: exquisite! But this list is too vague. Do you have any real candidate in mind?
a: Lets take an example of the scammer politician who stole money from coffins of dying soldiers. Or take example of that police officer, who raped a child and got away with it. And the son of chief minister who ran over those innocent kids and murdered the waitress in that lounge.
B: great suggestions, But these people are highly protected. Besides they are known criminals and will be punished by the law.
A: punished? the trial? its a joke. Its all a sham. These people need to be brought to the justice by chopping off their balls and sending a loud and clear message through Mass media.
B: Well, this could cause mass Chaos, besides mass media is controlled.
A: Chaos is very much desirable. And we need to kill one these bastard journalists.
B: Isn't the integrity of your plan compromised by revealing it to me?
A: No, it isn't. I need to Brainstorm and I need to find flaws in this plan.
B: ME? I am not doing it!
A: Why? you have better stuff to do?
B: No, this is insane!
A: What is this about the sanity of yours? you live life like a rat. Someone have to take responsibility.
B: who? me?
A: No, I will do the honours, I just need a partner.
B: I don't want to get caught.
A: you wont. We will not be related. I just need ears.
B: RIGHT! and how to you intend to undo what I know?
A: How about killing you in the end?
B: damn you! you will kill me?
A: Its the only worthy thing to do.
B: May be not, can we return back to our boring Normalcy.
A: Think of how much good can be done, think of it as revolution.
B: Society wont see it as revolution. It will be seen as genocide by a psychopath.
A: Its not a crime. Its not driven by money. Its driven by a bigger cause and good faith.
B: good faith? what crap?
A: Yeah, restoration the faith in honesty and human values. 10 dead wont make a difference.
B: Right, It wont change a damn thing!
A: No, it needs to be sent as a message. A clever scheme is required. If I can evade being caught until I execute 10 killing, mission is pretty much accomplished.
B: Yeah and once you are caught. you will be the part of living hell.
A: We are already living in hell. I just need a way to send reminder to everyone else.
B: Ok, for sake of it everything goes as you say, which is highly unlikely. What you do next?
A: handover myself over or commit a public suicide with a suicide note or a suicide book with extensive details like say jim.
B: Quite brave and heroic, but stupid as fuck.
A: Not stupid. All ideas are stupid in the beginning. Good work and planning can get you what you really want.
B: Really? I think all you(or anyone else) want is shit load of money and beautiful women.
A: May be. But I am not that shallow to waste myself for material crap. As joker said, "we need better class of criminals"!
B: So we are criminals?
A: No, you are missing the point. What we are planning to do can be considered as crime in legal and civil framework, but its implications are far beyond the existence of this framework. All revolutions were called crime by the authority, Later it turned out it was the struggle for freedom/republic.
B: So you are a freedom fighter now?
A: No, we already have freedom. And this is about protecting it. And its not just me, its us now.
B: Woah! I am not a part of it.
A: you are, like everyone else.
B: If you want want to execute this. What will be the plan.?
A: Good question. First the selection of candidates. A detailed study of his/her lifestyle and creation of a profile. preparing an execution method and calculating timing.Planing the budget. Create a demo. Look for associated factors and parameter in this execution plan. Find the effectiveness of this killing. Methods of sending message. Capture avoidance planning till next execution. Estimation of time frame between each execution, I want to give them time to digest it and as the fear falls down, give them another dose of death. Human minds are so used to this freedom, fear is only way to stop its misuse.
B: So you don't rule out killing women?
A: There is no discrimination here. A scum is just a scum, nothing more.
B: Budget! Where do you get the money from.
A: Initially my own money and then each dead pays for his next companion in after life.
B. What about the families?
A: target's family would be financial secure in some way.
B: Don't you know that all crimes are driven by needs generated by family.
A: Exactly, So family need to pay the price. Besides someone will be sacrificed on the road to greater glory.
B: That sounds like lenin? You will still be affecting innocent lives.
A: The idea is to portray these filthy bastards as cancer to the society, which needs to be eliminated. The media would try to make martyr out of them. This is the biggest fallacy in the plan. So I need to kill the people who are already hated and who are in trial and send the message across. Once the message is through the martyrdom is gone.
B: Whoa, really? Trying to kill someone in judicial custody or police protection. you are not capable of that?
A: No, I will start with someone whose security protocols are loose. And I will sacrifice these easy targets first.
B: So you may still leave the biggest scum in the pool and go for an easier shot.
A: I have to strike the balance.
B: More like you want to just kill someone!
A: That is the only feasible solution to this super complex problem.
B. I suppose so. So what next.............................

hindi comics and my dissappointment

2011-02-19T00:50:00.002+05:30

Before i start, i must apologize for two reasons:
1. I may criticise some heros and storylines(and hence may offend some people)
2. This may be a long post.

I am a big fan of Nagraj and he is like the first love(in a fanboy kind of way). But to my dismay, his comics are super-silly most of the times, but his storylines especially ones which involves his origins are very interesting. Series like "nagraj ka ant", "khajana", "zahar" was fabulous, Nagayan also started wonderfully, but ended in a fiasco. They started nagaraj terrorism series two times, once they did some stupid stuff with Afganistaan and all, which was awful. The next series of "jahrila barood" and following comics were superb. The new authors and new make over was wonderful. I also like series involving Visarpi and other "Nagdweep" characters. The best part of Nagaraj series are uniqueness of its mythological origin, which is found in no other comics(there may be similar line, but not quite this). Most sideline stories of nagraj like "fuel", "venom" were pitiful. I would say that even earlier comics involving Miss killer, thodanga, nagmani, shakura were wonderful, but new villians get created in one page and get lost in other page. Its like turning around the junk to find a phoney metal. And every now and then everything and everyone in story becomes god like. and in next page they get vanished. This is stupid and annoying.
I admit Nagraj is almost as powerful as superman or lets say he is equivalent of superman for Raj Comics. But he is not a god and stop treating him like one.

Coming to Dhruv. I liked dhruv a lot during older times. I mean the first time I read grand master robo in 1995, i felt like i have discovered Pandora's box. stories like "akhiri daav" , "champion killer", "awaaz kee tabahi" were brilliant. "mene mara dhruv ko " series were very well done. His origin stories like "khooni khandaan", "Jigsaw" were marvellous., But later when they combined nagar and dhruv in THE-WORLD-WILL-END kind of series every now and then, And then Dhruv will keep doing things which are scientifically impossible plus severely flawed even from raj comics point of view. And every now and then they keep throwing "smartest man in the world" bullshit. I mean the virtues should be reflective of actions and not the other way round. To be smartest man, you don't have to say it like 100 times in a comics. I have not read dhruv's comics for a long because all new comics look repetitive with a set of formula. Only time i get to read Dhruv is with Nagraj and then also they both end up going on suicide mission like three times in a comics.

Coming to Doga, I must admit Doga is most consistent of all the superheroes. He is a no bullshitter. I haven't read a lot of old Doga comics, but I picked up a lot of his origin stories, and I must say they represents darkness, depth and pain. I was reading "doga hindu hai", "doga hai hai" series, the plots are very well crafted. I couldn't follow the series for long. But they were "the comics". you always know what to expect from Doga comics.
Other characters, i would like to mention is Bankelal. He was superb in the past, but a lot of toilet humour have sunk in his comics lately. And newer comics are driven by a synthetic laughter or forced humour. Bankelal need a really good rewrite.
My old favourite Gojo disappeared. I don't want to bring this matter. Same applies for bheria, i haven't read any comics since they separated, but lots of folks say they are still as they were, which is good.
I read couple of Tiranga comics which were utterly disappointing, i mean you want to rip of Captain, please look at his iconic stature.

Most Raj Comics fan are the old timers, who follow comics for the love of it. I am not sure how many new comics book fans are getting added??? I even recommended comics to couple of youngsters, they rejected it on the grounds of it being too silly or some kind of LIFT-OFF from DC or Marvel. We all know that is true to certain extent. A lot of fans would defend the comics in whatever way they are.
I think a lot of recent changes by Raj comics are wonderful and I am thankful to them for creating a wonderful site and revamping the franchise. But lets face it, contents need to revamped.
We need stories, which have depth and some sort of association with reality. We need somebody like Frank Miller, Mark Millar and Alan moore. And I am sure there are people who can do equally good job. Please tell me I am not being over ambitious. I guess the character of Dhruv's potential need a story which should be very complex and yet believable. There is a desperate need to remove the redundancy from his comics. He need to less verbal and stories should be self explanatory. Not everytime Dhruv has to say things in his mind. That represents a week plot and week graphics because the whole idea of comics is to understand a lot of things from the graphics. And for christ sake, stop resurrecting characters. In time period of 5 comics, characters get entirely rebooted, This is so annoying. We need some stories(or graphics novel) which can redefine the characters and story lines. No matter how good the marketing is, if your product is not good enough, the market will eventually reject it. The last thing I want is Raj comics to suffer the same fate as tulsi/manoj etc.
Another major issue is consistency, they always have wonderful starts and wonderful themes, but by the climax its all screwed up. No one gets a single scratch??? why is that so? The comics are reflections of life in exaggerated manner, so why is everything always "hunky and dory"? and why can't they keep the good story line till end. One comics is fantastic, and other total rubbish. I kinda hate it when I spend my money to find out i bought a total rip-off. As much as love Raj comics, I must say they fail to impress 5 out of 10 times. I still buy comics for the sake of it. But lets face it this may keep them alive, but wont let them grow as i would expect them to be.

the doppler shift

2010-11-11T05:25:00.003+05:30

Have you ever wondered in your life about your strongest beliefs? The time when you believe in spite of being not judged, there is a compulsion forced upon you in order to be nice. The line between being cocky and "just trying to exhibit your ability" is so fine that you fail to take a right decision. Or worst you question your decision.
Your humility is not enough, the worst part is there is no way to measure it. Your actions are least cared about and you have no idea of what to expect. You believed "what is it that you can't tackle" but here you are struggling with the tiniest of problem.
Is your skill, experience and ability under a test to which you can easily succeed, but you still are so unsure. Your normal or in fact what you believed your mild indulgence is not really mild enough. What strength is still driving you? or are you just mad on yourself.
The adequate amount of sophistication or huge amount of savageness? what would you choose, is your goal is always to win? Are you treating everything your action to achieve an end.... or is the means; what worries you most?

There is not limit to what can puzzle you, confuse you. No matter how well versed you are with the universe, but it will throw newer scenarios at you, which will toss you like you never existed. Your quantification of unknown is always insufficient; Does it compel you to give up?
It is this time you stand up tall, you fight, you fight harder, the victory is not a matter of accomplishment, its a matter of good fight. Never give up, may be find an another way, may be try newer methods, but stand up to what you always believed in.

The TV thing

2010-07-23T11:28:00.000+05:30

Since childhood, Sapota was watching Republic day parade on Telly except for when we have republic day celebrations in school and Sapota was among the participants. Sapota wondered how would it be to watch that thing live. Sapota somehow managed to get tickets for republic day parade last year. So this blog is more than a year late, but as always, Sapota can certainly come up with shitty reasons, but this time its just plain laziness.
Anyway, so we reached there on time, and it was early morning 6:40, bloody cold, and swarms of people coming to see the thing live. But still the turn out was low, because of terrorist threat and all that. Sapota just have one argument against that, If we are not safe at Janpath, we are not safe anywhere! Folks your houses are no fucking fortresses, get the fuck out of them to visit something worthy.
See Sapota had no overwhelming feeling of Patriotism or something. The reason is that there is literally nothing patriotic about singing patriotic songs, watching so called patriotic movies or for that matter watching parade at Janpath. Sapota wanted to see it how good our troops look when in they march in unison. All nations are equally good, so what is all that chauvinism about? Yes, Chauvinism and patriotism are two different things, but people fail to draw the line. Anyway, sorry for the gyan, but Sapota made his point clear.
So Sapota and his friend model settled on this uberchilly filthy metal bench and started discussing the program schedule for the day. So finally the Hon'ble chief guest Her Excellency the president of Democratic republic of India Mrs Prithbha Patil arrived in a black Merc limousine, waving to everyone. Following her were Guards of the president on camel. The funny thing was, there were folks, who were collecting camel dump, running just behind the camel troupe. The announcers(English and Hindi) were very typical Doordarshan style, which I prefer over anchors from private channels. So as Mrs President took her seat, the show begun. The first one to appear were Para commandos, they were on double march. Its most beautiful coordinated march I have ever witnessed in my life, they were all singing and they were fully armed with bag packs and Short machine guns. Movement of each and every foot and every elbow were in microsecond precision. Following them were Maratha regiment, they were equally good, except for the fact that they were on normal march and their uniforms were pristinely creased. Next to them were Rajputs, bloody tall and with moustaches that can make a lion pee in his pants(err lions don't wear pants).
Next there were many other marches from many units of Defence forces right from Navy to arti to Radars and what not. Then they displayed few missiles, not able to recall correctly, but it was agnee or prithvi(probably a replica). Then there were many other security forces like BSF and Delhi police and Delhi fire service. Interesting thing was seeing CRPF march, they were all tall and well built dudes with striking uniform with white boots and turban with butterfly like top yellow coloured, their march with clockwork precision was spectacular. Later the NCC cadets follow, they were playing "we shall overcome", given the fact, that they are just students, they were very good.
Most funny thing were exhibition from state. Some of them seem half hearted efforts, some of them totally disoriented. Sapota totally fail to understand if they have even made some progress to showcase. MP state's forest exhibition was totally a dumb idea, with no thoughts whatsoever.
Anyway, there were lot of school children singing and dancing, they were cute and well coordinated for their age. Sapota can't now recall the name of school or the dance they performed(see this is the disadvantage of being old).
Last portion was seeing signal guys coming on motorcycle. They are called motorcycle daredevils. Sapota have seen them in past, but seeing them live is another experience all together, these guys just steal the show. They are so well coordinated and all stunts are effortlessly performed. And all of them were of Royal enfield: army version.
Last part of the ceremony was seeing air to air fueling, which was invisible to sapota, as it was way too high in sky. Later, fighter plane soared in sky, one of them was quite low. The ceremony ended after Mrs President left in her limo.
This one was not particularly all that grand due to bomb threats and low turn out, but experience was fantastic. By this time we were too hungry, so we headed to breakfast at model's house.

an emotional affair

2010-07-14T18:53:00.004+05:30

Before starting, Sapota admits his technical ignorance as far as game of football goes. But in recent times, sapota has been following football madly and gaining some more insight in order to appreciate the beauty of game.
So before last Euro cup, sapota randomly picked up Spain, one reason is that sapota loves spanish language and culture and as you can see, this blog is themed in noobish spanish style. So Sapota has been supporting Espana for 3 years now. Raul was one of the yesteryears star sapota always liked, mostly because he was biggest name in Real and a very prolific forward. While sapota started supporting Espana randomly, they got lucky and won Euro. while sitting between 4 people, who were supporting Deutsch, holding a catalonian flag was difficult, but sapota is an obstinate bustard and he prevailed.

Since sapota was not having TV, he lived on Fifa.com for all the info. For this season of UEFA championship, sapota followed bayern very seriously. Bayern defeated ManU and Juventus and Bordeux to finally fight internationale in final. They lost but given their state of affairs, it was an acceptable defeat. Half of my team(yeah bayern) have player which belong to either Deutsheland or The Netherlands. Now supporting spain against these favourite ones was difficult task. Seeing your boy Swansteiger getting dejected after a loss is too much.

So the very first match sapota glued himself was espana vs swiss. The swiss defeated espana. Sapotas heart sank in fear and sadness for many days without loosing his cool. Sapota stopped watching matches. While Brasil, Argentina, The netherlands and germany were sailing easy, Espana were bit stumbling. The loss was majorly due to lack of coordination and killer instinct football needs. But it was a good shocker for them, which later proved to be beneficial to them. The thought which were haunting in sapota's mind were seeing brasil and espana play each other so early. Though today I can say Espana would have outclassed Brasil. But Brasilians would have upset them if they have strong morale given espana were still finding its form, but inevitable didn't happen and both team were saved. The next match which made sapota sad was German loosing to serbs. The serbs played as if they are on some army mission and they executed it perfectly, klose's departure sealed german fate. Sapota stopped watching league matches at all. Only thing he did was looking into fifa scoresheet in the morning. Somehow, all the favs had the same ranking as expected. The fear of first loss was not still away, so Sapota avoided Espana vs portugal.
Once Espana recovered fully, sapota was all set to watch Brasil vs the netherland. The worst part of this duel was seeing two favourite fighting each other so early. Sapota was confident Brasil will edge out dutch as easily. So he went for the live. Brasilian dominated first half as if dutch were no bodies. Dutch were at that time building the schema, after second half dutch started playing a strange physical game, which made brasilains upset and the first yellow card is flaunted thanks to Robben. Initially Sapota was sad as Robben's team would be out so early, but later Robben played unlike his original self, the desperation to win was so evident. He is supremely talented, very shrewd and if required can smartly get dirty. Barring two matches he played like a champion.
In the match bommel, van parsie and dutch defence tried everything they could to disrupt the brasilian rhythm, worst part is Brasilian gave up to what dutch wanted. The self goal by Melo was one of the most hurting moment of the match. Sapota believe Cesar would have saved the goal, if it wasn't for the melo to jump. Later on the german mechanics of kyut sniejder air headers killed the brasilian. In the mean time, sapota got angry, sad and upset all at the same time. Some folks at the venue of TV made sapota further upset by arguing with him, and this lead to general outburst of high pitch screams and what not. This all later proved out to be big moment of embarrassment due to triggered arrogance. Sapota cursed dutch team for dishonesty and cursed his fav player Robben for being such a foul player. Despite the fact that his Fav team was still in run, sapota literally disassociated himself with the futbol.
This was after 13 years that sapota had such emotional outburst with sports and he was heartbroken. Slowly and gradually the emotion was wearing off, and Espana was progressing steadily towards final. Sapota was lukewarm with spanish progress, but still not ready to watch any matches for the fear of loss.
The day final was due, sapota knew that dutch would play foul, but he knew spanish can do the same, not on that physical level but they can act like morons if required. Unfortunately, sapotas net connection was down, so he couldn't get the progress of match anyway from fifa site. Later in morning while in pool, he tried to overhear people talking about match but not really result. Sapota was at this time ready for any result. Later he saw the news in paper and was instantly happy.
At this moment, support felt like a weak supporter not having full confidence in his team. Besides, Its never about wins or losses, its about standing for your team, no matter what. But the last two matches have left sapota so ajar, that this time it could have made sapota get very depressed, if Espana would have lost while he was watching the match live.
In retrospect, sapota have learned to respect a lot of players including the english ones namely Gerrard, Lampard and terry. Have hated his favourite Robben and bommel. Acted like a cry baby and recovered back to his usual composure.
Sapota don't want to shove his team is so good attitude to anyone, that is unlike being a sports fan. But yeah it is a luke warm fun. The most enjoyable part is discussing it with people, who know what is being talked about.
Now sapota is looking forward for when the world cup returns to the holy land of Estdio de Maracana and that is when he will full heartly support A selecao.

Viva Zapata

2010-06-21T11:59:00.001+05:30

This land is yours. But you must protect it. It won't be yours long if you don't protect it. If necessary, with your lives, and your children with their lives. Don't discount your enemies. They will be back. And if your house is burned, build it again. If your corn is destroyed, replant. If your children die, bear more. If they drive you out of the valley, live on the mountain, but live. You always look for leaders, strong men without faults. There aren't any. There are only men like yourselves. They change. They desert. They die. There are no leaders but yourselves. A strong people is the only lasting strength - Emiliano Zapata Salazar

Idealism is a difficult trait, specially for the people closely surrounding the idealists. Idealist leaders may always be swarmed by followers but, those closely related to him are constant state of trouble due to their idealist behaviour. Sometimes followers would resist them when they bring change and deviation from what is otherwise understood as normal behaviour. Idealist inspire and motivate people, they are the heroes of masses. Everyone looks upto them but, no one wants to live with them. They do have logic of their own to believe in their actions and they tend to have a foresight for greater good of everyone. The vision may sometimes be short, but it bring hopes to repressed masses.
For the first time, Sapota has seen Marlon Brando as an idealist hero. His general portray of character is erratic, self indulgent and apathetic protagonist, who will arouse pity and disgust but, not heroism. Brando does it exactly the way it should have been. This may seem a bit of an overstatement; Portraying a Mexican hero in a cinema could be difficult, and Marlon Brando seems like an outrightly wrong choice, but he plays it well enough to prove that wrong. His style is engrossing and he evokes compassion.

Zapata could not read or write, but he was a wise man. He firmly believed that leader should be educated. He being a farmer himself have correct understanding of the needs of fellow men. One sequence in movie is particularly remarkable "Zapata become president and write name of the farmer, who cross questions him, this suddenly becomes a turning point where he threw away his presidency and started fighting beside the revolutionaries". This is where idealism kicks in. Like an idealist he is a constant fighter, he doesn't care for fancy suits and high offices. The dubiousness of morality of government and military official in implementing the land reforms provokes his conscience to leave the presidency. He understood that in this era of civil war, there would never be any peace and revolution will continue. So, he chooses to stay with revolutionaries.
There is an amazing synergy between Elia Kazan and Marlon Brando, where both of them builds up marvellous tempo in the movie. Both are so idiosyncratic still they align so well. No wonder all their movie as a team are wonderful.

Monogamy was not such a great virtue in times of revolution, but Zapata had a sense of being loyal to one women and he tries everything to get her. But he could have married her only when he was rich or a ranking officer. Zapata during entire course of his life never had tendency of acquiring ranks and offices. He was inclined towards obtaining the means to sustain the revolution. During the war due to constant victories, he becomes general of southern armies. This makes it easy for him to marry the women he loved. But living with an idealist was no easy deal, he demanded his wife to teach him reading. As the revolution intensifies the life becomes hard, his in-laws wanted him to leave the war posts and sit in office like a typical general. The president even offered him a ranch, but idealist never want all that, he had bigger things to worry about, his current engagement was implementation of land reforms.
When his brother gets killed in an ambush, he takes him home for a normal funeral instead of a martyr's funeral. Since he died in a personal battle and not and not in the revolution. He created a new legacy for entire Mexico, even after his death, people never believed he died. And so the Mexican revolution continued even after his death. He created a new generation of leaders and revolutionaries, whose aim was to protect the land and interests of farmers.

forgive me, forgive me not.

2010-05-31T18:14:00.007+05:30

What is a good song?
How is it defined?
There is lot of technicalities, which can be talked about a fibre of good song.
But a good song is a great composition, which for some unknown parameter is so dear to you.
You have heard this song for 6 years, repeated it in loop for many times, you have lost track of the number of times you have heard it. You have heard it a zillion times, you have heard it so much that you got bored of it. You don't want to hear it anymore. You leave the song and move on to future musical composition. But then one fine day you feel an urge to listen to it again. And this urge is as strong as any narcotic drug. You remember every beat, every riff, every note, every pitch and all the words in the song. You lived your entire life in that song. Time stops every time you hear it. You don't care where you are, you want to get immersed in the song, its like a treasure island, where you are cluelessly wandering to find something priceless, which bloody never existed.

Sapota dont give a flying fuck what metal kids say about Metallica. Sapota had sufficiently ventured into all genres of Heavy Metal to have an opinion. And musical choices are driven by feel for it, not by coolness factor associated with it. Anyway, who the fuck cares!
Well this song is not really thrash, its more of core melodic metal. But more than its technical merits of being a metal song, this song tells a story, and story one can associate so easily with.
UnforgivenS(yes an extra "S" for the fact that there are three of them now) are one such lore of a man, who undergoes a lot in life. To be honest "unforgiven too" is my favourite in series for the plain fact that I heard it before the Super awesome original Unforgiven. Unforgiven is much more terse for a person who is new to such genre of music, whereas "Unforgiven 2" is much easy to understand. While by the time you come to "Unforgiven 3", you have heard previous unforgiven so many times, that you will never forgive Metallica, if they screw the series with a mediocre song. If it was for any other band, this song would have been easily regarded as the greatest song they could have imagine. But with Metallica, expectations are very different, they were once the GOD, and now they are God that failed. But let me assure you that "Unforgiven 3" is one of the greatest song ever created, though not comparable to originals, but priceless. It has same effect on you as the originals, the humming guitars just reverberates in you mind till you you get completely immersed in the song. The story of the man continues, but with a different angle.
The best part about any good Metallica song is Jaymz Hetfield will make you feel what he is feeling, or may be its just me, who associates so much with these songs. A lot of it is said in the way you always wanted to say, but never had right word. Metallica did it just for you and in the exact manner it was suppose to be.

There are lines in these songs, which hit you back, which haunt you in a very specific way, you feel a need to listen to them and try to understand if there is something cryptic or missing. You want to relisten to them as if you are trying to read between the lines. But I guess songs have said a lot in that small period of time.
After a very long period of time, the urge to listen to something so classic as The Unforgiven shows that it commands you by brute force which will pull you towards them. You were, for months, listening to super complex highly technical compositions which were executed in unhumanly precise manner, But you get pulled out of all that to listen to Unforgiven because "what I felt what i have know, never shine through what I have shown.... Never free never me... so be I dub thee unforgiven" and because "What I've felt, what I've known.... Sick and tired, I stand alone.... Could you be there?, 'cause I'm the one who waits for you Or are you unforgiven too?" and because "And how can I blame you When it's me I can't forgive?"

This country deserves a better class of patriotism

2010-04-12T23:26:00.003+05:30

There are few simple things which can be done for good of this country and its people. And why only this country, but to entire world and to all humans and other living beings.

1. Don't bloody throw your waste on the road

I carried my entire waste 300 kms in the rain, since I couldn't locate any wastebins and those hills were too beautiful. To me littering is suicidal. It hurts me most, when there are no dustbins for miles and there is no way you can carry all your waste in your pockets(yes, we have fucked up systems). I can't tell others what to do, but I can ensure every toffee wrapper, every bottle, ever packet I have used get disposed properly(and if required I will carry it until I find a suitable waste bin).

2. You can carry your stuff in your own bare hands, you would still remain yourself.

I carry a packet of milk and a packet of bread almost everyday from shop to my home bare hand without the god damn polyethylene bag. Yeah, its bit inconvenient, its ugly and oh no! your bloody reputation is on stake. Whole world will know that you looked so awkward when you carried your stuff in your bare hands. And you the great descendant of Mr Attila, the Hun will be disgraced eternally. Well, there are always better way of doing it with proper foresight, but you always forget to bring your bag along.

When you litter, someone else picks up that for you, who is that person?
oh! he is paid for it.... and what about those places, where there is no one who gets paid for picking up your waste? Why are we so oblivious? we just throw our shit around, without even thinking for one damn second.
And we blatantly spit around everywhere. How pathetic? Entire country is our spit bin.

Somehow people don't think all this has to do anything with patriotism. But what is love of country(or world for that matter?) Isn't it about protecting its existence and keeping it the way it was? Consider it as war, and hence the glory of protecting your beloved motherland.

Well if you are reading this, please, I request you to follow the above two, they are not all that hard to follow. And please follow it in spirit with your heart. You are smart enough to argue against these points, but this is not about winning this debate and I am not saying something, which we already don't know.

Firstly I wanted to get this thing printed in form of handouts and distribute it to people, but that would have defeated entire purpose of this activity. Printing this on paper will lead to cutting of trees somewhere. This is definitely not the worst thing I have ever said or done. But I wish I could stay away from all the "preachy-ness" and do something worthy, and hence sharing this thought

I want to spread this word, I am not sure how? I would be glad to know some practical way of doing this. But, I wouldn't like to talk, I would like to do something. We already talk a lot and implement nothing.

The high marriage

2010-02-12T17:15:00.013+05:30

What makes this wedding most interesting is that this is among the few last marriages of sapotas chums, which sapota will grace with his not-so auspicious presence. But you guys are bloody lucky, that Lord Sapota himself was present on the ceremony. So for the first time Sapota was traveling toward uttaranchal, so he was excited about the jouney. The dood is sapota's ex room mate, Sapota and dude had shared endless experiences in life. But Mr TATA-SUZUKI(the groom) has been around, and he has been so powerful with his entire killer personality that he made Mighty lord sapota to relocate his ass all the way to Capital from Pune, but then just anything for friends.
Sapota was quiet well in acquaintance with both merging Multi nationals(you read it right, TCS and MUL Joint Venture, i.e.). The marriage took place a bit in haste, we were expecting it in the end of the year, but somehow it took off in May(yes, right, the blog is too late, but sapota has no obligations to write, BOOM!!!). So the total turnout at marriage from the gang was low, and Mr. Groom was bit pummeled for this haste(please get us married, we can't live separate anymore, du'oh!)
Anyway, me and kanpa made it to the wedding party a night early and had discussion with one of the fellow Groom's brother in law all night and it was fun, but scary fun. In the morning Mr model as usual turn out late(yeah yeah, you r the hero, all high and mighty *rolling eyes*). So Mr Suzuki got an old olive green esteem(!!!!!) for his wedding; me model and kanpa and Mr Suzuki loaded ourselves into the SEDAN and the journey begun.
So we started out as usual discussing all the previous marriages and then drawbacks and advantages of relationship and what-not-bull-shit and then all high fundas of cinema and music. But the funny thing is in all this discussion, the only victim was Mr Naresh Suzuki Tata. He thought since he is THE groom, we will spare him(LOL, fools paradise). It was bloody hot, but thanks to AC car, we were spared. Then the discussion started venturing into the theories of bird-and-bee and stork-and-baby territory(u guys guessed it right!), again Mr. Groom was blushing and couldn't say much, which was surprising, we even discussed various elements of bee-and-bird theory to which Mr suzuki pleaded all the innocence, but we again victimized him and had good laugh. By the time we entered uttaranchal, the climate became wonderfully pleasant.
When we reached our hotel in almora, it was totally dark, so had little difficulty in locating the place. Finally we got ready for what-we-were-here-for(comon, dancing int he marriage party, Is it that hard to guess?), but at this altitude with up-the-slope walk, we hardly could keep up much. Finally we reached to marriage hall, which was one of the most awkward constructed building sapota have ever seen, but at this particular terrain, this building seems to be the only way. We entered at marriage hall, and we were overloaded with joy people had, because we danced so well(NAWTTT!). Now one more funny thing was the location of buffet, it was on the terrace of this marriage hall, and the view from the terrace made sapota dizzy.
Now all the nuptial ritual took place one after the other, sapota had the camera, which he used to his advantage, and was later caught for mis-use of camera, much to sapota's embarrassment. We retired after the photo session. We woke up early in the morning to see what is going on at marriage hall. Much to sapota's surprise, the negotiation for stealing-the-shoe ceremony was still on. Sapota knew it, extracting money from the vault of Mr. Scrooge is not that easy, and he made few chics upset with that. Later on, we had the usual chit chat with bride's family and after exchanging pleasantries, we took off from Almora. This time we were in Innova, with bride and grooms friends, return journey was fun, with loads of photographs taken at many strategic location. Finally, Sapota was invited at reception, but due to dislike for this kind of functions, sapota stayed back(Mr Suzuki-Tata already know that, but I have to come with something for groom's family, since they were expecting me).

For now sapota has asked all of his friends not to invite him for any marriage functions as long as sapota doesn't want it.