Sil Khannaz Pendita Gila:

I still remember being extremely excited and thrilled about this one cassette tape I bought from a local record store when I was still in Kota Bharu many years ago. It was of a local death metal band called Sil Khannaz. What kind of band would call itself Sil freaking Khannaz? Even the moniker itself was an Arabic word referring to the devil's other name. Its like "Hello, my name is Satan but you can call me Sil Khannaz". This must be provocative and provocation was my middle name back then. It was an Extended Play; you know those kinds of tapes where you can actually buy them at RM8.90 a piece. It usually contains four to five songs and it would be the same four or five songs on each side of the cassette tape. Back then you can actually purchase a full album cassette tape for only RM13.50. Fucking glorious.

If my memory serves me correctly, I bought that EP cassette (and many other cassettes) at Pantai Timur Shopping Centre. The music department was actually heaven on earth for the younger version of me back then. They got like one whole fucking wall displaying rare heavy metal records and cassette tapes. I am talking about hundreds of heavy metal tapes dude. I sometimes would spend hours browsing each and every one of them and not once would I end up annoying the staff who usually would follow me around making sure I was not putting heavy metal cassette tapes into my pocket. “Akak, can you just stop following me and recommend me instead, the grimmest and heaviest satanic war Black Death Metal record ever recorded and distributed on this planet?” “Akak, Black Death Metal. Bukan Black Dog Bone. Itu disco!”

Pendita Gila, the album sleeve was red and white with Mr. Alistair Crowley bejeweled as the front cover. The front cover was kind of creepy with the cropped photo of Mr.Crowley staring straight into my eyes whispering his deadly admonition “Join the Temple of the Golden Dawn or I will have to eat you, boy!” although I did thought that his face-crouching position was kind of silly and funny at that time. “Sorry Mr.Crowley, you are a silly man indeed making scary faces like that”.

It contained 4 mesmerizing and heart ripping songs and those four songs altered my life forever. The throat crushing vocals seemed to gust out hypnotizing spells, sinful hymns and evil curses. It was funny to remember that I was literally frightened shitless when I first listened to Kiss of The Whisper, which later became their regular encore. What kind of vocal is this? I was awestruck. Two growling vocals, of different velocity respectively, on top of each other creating this weird spellbinding effect. The riffs were all evil and wicked as hell. Come to think of it, I have to admit, Pendita Gila was one of those rock albums that can really scare the shit out of you.

Unfortunately, I sold the damn tape to a friend of mine.