Review Summary: It's Sigh's personality unfolded into the fourth-dimension.
"This album is way beyond the conceived notion of how metal, or music, should be. In Essence it is a movie without pictures; a celluloid phantasmagoria. Accordingly, the film jumps, and another scene, seemingly unconnected with the previous context, is suddenly inserted in between frames. Every sound on this album is deliberate, and if you find that some parts of this album are strange, it isn't because the music is in itself strange, but because your conscious self is ill-equipped to comprehend the sounds produced on this recording."
The above passage, quoted from Sigh's 1997 album,
Hail Horror Hail essentially sums up Sigh's later sound - more specifically, what is called their more "evolved" and "progressive" sound - in a way which only Sigh could. It does point out the message rather well: the band tries to innovate polar opposites; but on the other hand, it's too prolix and pretentious to grant the positive attention which it somehow has gained. But, this is Sigh's personality; their music is no different from their self-analysis - long-winded, grandiloquent, and poorly-executed - and when taken to such as far an extent as
Imaginary Sonicscape, it becomes a grating source of irascibility.
Essentially, when broken down into the vaguest of terms (as well as the most functional), Sigh's music is awkward genre-juxtaposition at its worst. Their aforementioned "celluloid phantasmagoria" is simply a pretentious guise for a lack of talent in not just one aspect of their music, but in all of them. The band proves incompetent at performing metal music (the sound's ultimate staple), along with all of the other scatter-shot, which makes their sound one of the least fluent and interesting around. The band exemplifies stereotypes of the genres they perform, divide the genres into sections, and craft songs out of them. They're not coherent, of course, as evidenced by the choir of giggling infants on "Requiem: Nostalgia" and the choppy feel of "Slaughterhouse Suite." However, perhaps this less-than-desirable quality could be forgiven had the band been able to use this flair as a way to pique interest rather than bore. But of course, Sigh's style is humdrum and irritating.
For example, the beginning of "Slaughterhouse Suite" is one akin to
Scenes From Hell's "Summer Funeral." It's slow-moving, repetitive, and spectacularly unassuming metal, a quality which is furthered on the equally choppy "Scarlet Dream." However, both of these tracks utilize some sort of sub-par psychedelic influence, even if it's not used to such prolix excess as "Nietzschean Conspiracy" (because Nietzsche was all about prolix excess). Yet, it seems almost criminal to call their music psychedelic, considering it's simply an abuse of distortion, "vintage" keyboards, and vocoder. These tawdry inclusions do indeed add to the drug-addled feel of
Imaginary Sonicscape, but it's certainly a "bad trip." But there are still far worse inclusions to be found, such as the so called "jazz affinity" which litters the album. Unfortunately, this influence is either the awkward use of jazz syncopation, or absolutely abhorrent brass and wind sections, completely separated from that which came before. However, the complete reluctance to use segues (or perhaps the lack of wherewithal in the field) demolishes any potential the scores of mediocre piano bridges could have. These melancholic passages come without warning, destroying what impact could have risen from the predictable climax to any given song. Still, despite the atrocious songwriting, and the inadequate portrayal of genre juxtaposition, there is still far worse to be found on Sigh's
Imaginary Sonicscape.
The vocal performances on
Imaginary Sonicscape only attest to the fact that Sigh's portrayal of genre-juxtaposition is essentially the splicing of stereotypical styles. The vocals are usually limited to strained, hoarse growls, which are oftentimes completely inappropriate in the "sonicscape" they're placed in. However, the poorly-executed electric affinity (even less obvious than said love of jazz) takes a toll on the vocals after a while, warping and contorting vocal lines beyond recognition. For evidence, all one has to do is examine lines like:
"Die at my slaughtergarden."
*
But this brings up a more valid question, one which constantly recurs through the album, as well as the rest of Sigh's discography, one which also evidences the fall of Sigh's music into the narrow confines of stereotypes:
"what delusion allows Sigh to think that their lyrics are passable?"
I'd sigh and simply ignore those who try to find a deeper meaning than perhaps the meaning of life and death when examining
Imaginary Sonicscape's lyrics, which, by the way, should say more about a band's ideals than a metaphorical piece of pretentious self-praise. They continue to dumb down the several "scenes" which they traffic in, each of which is certainly thrown to Hell when put in the hands of Sigh, but it seems as though Sigh had a desire to mock the death metal scene when vocalist Mirai Kawashima spews forth lines like:
"Tear me apart til I die
Tear me apart, sacrifice
Tear me apart and hear my cry
Tear me apart to kill my pride."
Or perhaps you'll find the not-so-subtle allusions to Nietzsche when reading the lyrics to the aptly titled "Nietzschean Conspiracy," which, when having already been summarized by one of Germany's best prose writers, is obviously rehash. Even when taken in the context of this repetitive Japanese folk-disco-metal mash, the hammer hits the nail one (or eight) too many times. But again, this is Sigh's persona exemplified, and we've barely just begun listing all the faults with Sigh's attempt at ultimate, amorphous transcendence.
Outside of references to cannibalism, death being the equivalent to life (hyperboles abound), and the astral plane (what else?), Sigh continues to show their ignorance towards the
art of crafting elements of songs, and successfully integrating them into full-fledged compositions. I get it, they're trying to be unexpected, but their attempts of keeping listeners on their toes are complete flops: it still is glaringly obvious that Sigh's sound is the epitome of awkward genre-juxtaposition. The attempts at combining stoner metal, neoclassical, jazz, disco, house, dub, reggae, and so on and so forth are noted. However Sigh's music cannot fit into the ideal form of what their music could be, a series of options which, when put into vague terms, come down to two pathways and those which fall beneath them:
A.) The rather irrational modus operandi which has been constructed and followed by artists such as Zorn and Patton
or
B.) A more accessible, grandiose mode of fusion, seen with such artists as Toby Driver (and associates).
Unfortunately, Sigh don't have the charisma (or the ability to hone such unconventional takes on so many styles) to successfully chime in their own take on A, nor do they have the grandeur to do that with option B. So: Sigh traffic the middle road; and that could be fine if they could make it interesting, admirably technical or innovative, or perhaps even just ***ing fun. But no, Sigh are simply unable to live up to the hype which they have been subject to. Unfortunately, it is this hype which has allowed their absolutely abhorrent style to carry on for another decade, which shows that Sigh aren't progressing at all. In fact, even a devoted Sigh fan will acknowledge their regression since their opus (which apparently is this so, what is their worst?). It's an odd though actually, seeing a band who really haven't been continually progressing, nor have they been crafting progressive music - genre-juxtaposition is ancient - claiming themselves as progressive, and showing arrogance in the form of the first quoted paragraph. But hey, this is Sigh's personality, and although it's god awful, it... well... yeah it's just ***ing awful.
-Michael Bulldog
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*repeated ad nauseam
