Stalaggh
Projekt Misanthropia
0
I’m going to keep this one short and simple, as what is contained on Stalaggh’s third album Projekt Misanthropia is not music, much less metal, and therefore reviewing it as such is not really a relevant task (hence the lack of scoring). What we have here is one 35-minute noise piece, and whether or not you get anything out of this release or find it a waste of time (or a joke) will depend entirely on your appreciation and/or tolerance for the noise genre in the first place. “Projekt Misanthropia” consists entirely of piercing walls of static interspersed with a few other noises and effects, and layers upon layers of distorted shrieks, screams, coughs, moans, and various other wordless vocalizations provided by real mental patients. I’ve always found this aspect of Stalaggh to be gimmicky (not to mention in extremely poor taste), but I do concede that there is something that feels more disturbing and genuine about these “vocals” than the shrieks and grunts you would hear on a metal release. But its not that big of a deal. And it gets old after four or five minutes anyway.
At a couple of points during the mayhem, actual recognizable guitar riffing and drums (even some blasting towards the end) wander in and out of the mix. While I found these moments to be the most enjoyable parts of the disc, for the simple fact that they gave the endless static and screeching some actual structural context, it quickly hit me after I was done listening how ridiculous and random these segments actually were. Its almost like the guys behind this project didn’t even have the balls to make a straight noise record, so at the last minute threw in some cut-and-past “black metal” segments just so they could still consider themselves somewhat related to actual music.
I will give Stalaggh credit for this: there were a couple of times during my first listen where I did feel kind of uneasy, and that was obviously the whole point of these albums in the first place. The thing is, this piece is so long and completely one-dimensional that what starts out as creepy and strange quickly degenerates into boring and obnoxious. Even as a big fan of some of the less musical sides of metal and other music, I really can’t recommend this as anything more than a one-listen curiosity quencher or something trippy to put on while you and your friends light up a joint. Fans of noise artists like Merzbow and Whitehouse might want to hear this for themselves. Everyone else, don’t even bother. It really isn’t that cool, trust me.
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