Review Summary: An unexpectedly steely shot in the arm from one of metal's staunchest oddballs
Known for their horror-skewed manglings of black metal with everything ft. your kitchen sink, Sigh have two intertwined reputations: as a self-flaunting ‘weird’ act liberally exploitative on the expect-the-unexpected factor, and, more flatteringly, as a crash-tested vehicle equipped for any terrain and piloted with enough showmanship that any given direction will yield at least a worthwhile journey. They’re an easy sell for anyone who dabbles in experimental metal without taking it too seriously as an enterprise, but the handful of their records I’ve explored vary wildly in their staying power.
In Somniphobia and
Scenes From Hell, for instance, are clearly inspired and almost overbearingly creative, but too novelty-heavy to escape an aura of diminishing returns. On the other hand, their ramshackle masterwork
Imaginary Sonicscape plays over a more solid foundation, weaving a deceptively pervasive atmosphere from a psychedelic backdrop and trading hairpin genre flirtations against more substantiated freakfests, each feeding off the other’s respective titillation and disconcertion. That album in particular presents an appeal robust enough to transcend the moment-to-moment fireworks of its many disparate parts, and
that is what sits at the heart of my hopes every time I tune into a new Sigh record.
Shiki might just be their most affirmative answer to this so far. It’s by far one of Sigh's most focused albums, relentlessly direct in its approach, exhilaratingly maximal in its scope, and, at points, genuinely blood-pumpingly vicious. It’s also underpinned by uncharacteristically disciplined songwriting; though the band’s delivery is no less flamboyant than usual (especially frontman Mirai Kawashima’s incandescent bark), this time around they’re sparing with their novelty haymakers.
Shiki’s psych, prog and trad metal stylings are on display throughout, but these tracks are so tightly paced that their jostle of influences rarely has time to derail the flow of composition: by the time closer-in-effect “Mayonaka no Kaii” goes ahead and does just that, it scans more than anything else as a well-earned letting off of steam. There’s a little give-and-take here: Sigh full-timer Dr. Mikannibal’s saxophone contributions are an obvious casualty, while Kawashima’s keyboards are, if not toned down, then at least more selectively incorporated; the band make up with this with a masterclass of versatile riffage, impeccably crisp production and one of the most entertaining drum performances I’ve heard on a metal record in years, courtesy of Fear Factory’s Mike Heller. All three of these are distinct steps up from 2018’s solid-but-safe
Heir To Despair, and they afford fresh scope to the more streamlined approach the band adopted on that record.
This comes right into play on the stakes which operate between “Shouku”’s straightforward black metal stylings overlaid with operatic vocals, and its hard pivot into brutal verses: the latter's no-nonsense grit justify any measure of melodrama. The track is no hodgepodge; it’s a fleet-footed metal track that suggests Sigh have become so fluent in their long-standing alternation between the ridiculous and the murderous that, at long last, the lines between the two are delightfully blurred. Best of all in this respect is the central highlight “Satsui - Geshi no Ato" (that’s
Will to Murder - After the Summer Solstice, kids). This one is unapologetically overblown above all others, recklessly kitsch in its harmonised guitars and outright punishing in its vocal spew, but it takes the sheer spectacle of those elements in its stride with such clear direction and such deliciously violent delivery that it ends up a bona fide earworm. The Japanese language lends itself to a monosyllabic blitz in a way that English, with its glorious muddy mesh of twangs, slurs and diphthongs, can’t begin to approximate, and though it’s initially jarring to hear Kawashima double down on this so resolutely, there’s a great thrill to be found in the full-throated brimstone he brings to the track. On the other end of the spectrum is “Fuyu ga Kuru”: get over the faux pas of that “Enter Sandman” intro, and you’re in for a gear-shifting masterclass of atmospheric folk and icy doom, heavy enough to avoid the pitfalls of token balladry, but exquisite in the subtlety of its percussion and the grace of its flutes. If there’s any point where Sigh’s over-fetishised credentials for Japanese crossover-metal manifest as something tangible, this is the one.
However, there's an extra cinch in that title:
Winter Is Coming. This links into the album name
Shiki, which can be read as
Four Seasons (四*) or as
Time For Death (*期) and is intentionally left ambiguous as a metaphor for Kawashima's outlook on the latter end of middle age. The significance here isn’t necessarily the guy’s veteran sum of years (you can date him just from the fact that his debut released on poor ol' Euronymous’ label Deathlike Silence), but that his band’s sound is still so malleable, so creative and so
fun, as though time has done little but spur him on where it has stagnated countless others.
Shiki may be written and performed with a palpable wealth of experience behind it, but it’s a rarer thing to find a band so far into its career drawing from such enduring veins of inspiration and with such flair for the dramatic. In stark contrast to the recent works of such over-serious psychedelic black metallers as Blut Aus Nord and Oranssi Pazuzu, Sigh’s kitsch is self-spotlighting and polyvalent enough for a life beyond suspension-of-disbelief.
Shiki’s packs more than enough campness to lubricate its various points of friction; thrills and spills are par for the course here. It’s not hitch-free or seamless - the likelihood is we’ll never get either from a Sigh record - but it does have that breath of magic that turns its ridiculous peaks into entertainment and elevates its ferocious moments from dumb savagery to arresting drama. Whatever your silly criteria for worthwhile albums in this silly, silly genre, that’s something to swear on.
