Hail Spirit Noir was founded in the dawn of 2010 by Haris and Theoharis, also members of the avant-garde/symphonic combo Transcending Bizarre? and the prog band Rex mundi. Having already spent a year and a half on composing new material, the two masterminds of the band gathered a troupe of competent musicians in the foothills of legendary mount Olympus, at Lunatech Studios, to record their debut album. After severe experimentation and non-stop recording sessions, the result was an amalgam of psychedelic elements, horror atmosphere and modern day black metal.

Towards the end of 2011, the band joined forces with Code666/Aural music for a worldwide release of the debut album Pneuma in the spring of 2012.

The debut album is a mixture of psychedelic elements, horror, sad melodies and modern day black metal. The production is deliberately unconventional in the sense that it was mixed and mastered using mainly analogue gear, tube amps, vintage compressors, tape recorder for the strings (tiring but worth it), retro synths etc. 'Pneuma' can be described as 'old school' yet modern at the same time. The reverb was kept to minimum, even in the vocals, as the whole album was meant to sound claustrophobic in order to capture the listener within its atmosphere. Skilled and experienced sound engineers like Dim Douvras and Jens Bogren, who have worked with bands such as Rotting Christ and Amon Amarth in the past, made the vision of the band come true.

Lyrically, the album is full of allegories, irony and good old evil worship. The cover incorporates all these elements within a single figure.