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 Posted 11-08-2003 21:45 by JVV |
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Binnenkort op Total Holocaust records: Stalaggh/Hell Icon split 7". The most terrible 7" ever!
Voor mensen die nog steeds niet weten wat Stalaggh is, hieronder een recensie van Vampire magazine...
Do you ever wonder how it's like to be locked up in a mental institution? Can you imagine your cell during nighttime? The dreadful, cold and mirror-like concrete walls? Your sweaty back cleaving to the plastic sheets, and then there's that scent, a foul stench of industrial cleaning liquids and medicines making you vomit over and over again ... And although you've been on anti-depressives and tons of other drugs for months now (Where did it all start? Was it the Risperdal stuff, the Sobril or Imovane? When was your latest shot?) it just becomes worse, and worse and worse. You don't remember anymore if it's the isolation or the horrible screaming of your neighbor cell mates ... Does it still matter? Does it? What time is it? Every fukking day ends in total madness ... Stalaggh.
Or how is your emotional state when you've just slashed another victim? Are you nervous or satisfied? Do you feel comfortable? Still shaking? The blood on your hands, does it feel cold? Did you take the sheets with you? No souvenirs this time? Where did you leave the rope? How violent was it? Was it wild? Yeah? How lively? ... Stalaggh.
Stalaggh is probably the most terrible thing I ever heard and terrible is what it's all about and where its genius lies. This is the mathematical inversion of all positive human feelings. This is anti-life, anti-art and thus anti-music. There's no rhythm but anti-rhythm in this. There's no logic, no hope, no structure, no pattern; it's pure noise terror and brilliantly invoked chaos. It's madness mixed with confusion, pain, torture, psychotic nightmares, paranoia, extreme fear, addiction, murder, nihilism and sickness. This is everything life doesn't need and that's why it's so bloody interesting. Generally people listen to music for mainly the same reason: to enjoy something. Be it joy or love in pop music and violence and aggressiveness in metal, they still miss a big part of the picture. They miss the other side, the dark half, the negative part, the minus to the plus, the anti-part, the un-enjoyable. Stalaggh makes you sick, it makes you feel uncomfortable and nervous, it invokes feelings you usually try to avoid or deny. Spinning this 7" or the Project Nihil LP becomes a thrilling yet depraved experience.
Technically spoken, Stalaggh was created by some members of the Belgian and Dutch Black Metal and Elektro/Ambient scenes together with a mental-institution patient, suffering from Anorexia Nervosa and Borderline Syndrome, and a murder convict, so says the bio. The noise terror was improvised during the studio session and directly recorded. Using such people or saying you've used them could ofcourse be an excellent way to hype/promote the band but if it would ever turn out this was all just made up, it would be an extremely bad joke. The mental patient who contributed to Stalaggh recently died/committed suicide. According to the label, the man was quite artistic and made some interesting drawings of which they, after I asked for it, scanned and send me one. Now, my girlfriend happens to be an art-historian so I showed her the picture without telling its probable background. She looked a few minutes to it (it's extremely detailed) and surprisingly said to me that it must have been drawn by ... a mental patient. Don't think that it was some deranged and badly drawn sketch, it was quite a piece of art and in a certain way beautiful. Strange, ... no proof ofcourse, but strange ...
To describe how it all sounds is rather difficult. Stalaggh has often been compared with Abruptum, which is not totally wrong, but goes much, much further and is way more chaotic. You can expect a lot of dreadful screaming, as background 'melody' or loud 'lead part', mixed with cold, mechanic sounds, deep echoing noises, ... Guitars (?), drums heavily distorted and totally a-rhythmic, ... There are no songs at all, it's one long, depressive sound journey.
So no remarks? Not really. I think this is very interesting as experiment, the 7" and the LP, but another similar recording (and I believe it's on its way) would be rather pointless. I would be much more interested in a combination of such misery with some decent black metal. Imagine the nihilistic sound of Stalaggh sampled/combined into some serious black metal terror (like for example some Selbstmord Service band), now that would truly kill!
Take your time for this, have no expectations of what so ever, throw away any standard you have, overcome rumors and then listen, explore and shiver. Existence is futile ...
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Hilarischhhhhh 
Verval, 23 januari 2004 www.wolversveen.tk www.controlhumandelete.com
