Review Summary: Like a pretentious bastard shrouding self-doubt with big words and similes, like Stephenie Meyer and Rationalist with words, Sigh comes with genre juxtaposition. In essence, they fail.
In writing, meaningless verbiage may obfuscate the reader from the author's purpose. One can also attempt to shroud mediocrity with (what else?)
more mediocrity via the same methods. The latter of which plagues Sigh on their eighth full-length album. A recurring problem with Sigh, the band continues to take the ever so popular method of masking insipid creations with far superior artwork. On
Scenes From Hell one may argue that Sigh is an eclectic band with a mind of their own. Sure, they contrive and splice neoclassical and jazz pieces with metal throughout the album. Occasionally, something positive arises from it, as shown on “Vanitas” and “The Red Funeral”. However, these occasions are true rarities. Most of the time, Sigh shroud amateur thrash riffs, bland death metal instrumentation, and terrible vocals with said genres. That is how Sigh comes, come scatter-shot, awkward, and unnecessary. However, they still reign supreme over the metal aspects of this album.
A hodgepodge of said components are shown at their worst when examining “The Summer Funeral”, a droning, boring, utter mess of a track. Here, along with “L'art De Mourir” one notices Sigh's incompetence with song structure. Monotony becomes a staple of this album, and the results are abhorrent. Sigh insist on cramming laughable, low grunts and poorly-executed attempts at extreme metal (irritatingly slow blast beats and overtly simplistic thrash riffs run rampant) down the listener's throat. Certainly not the most expertly crafted brand of extreme metal, their intensity is shrouded in a pretentious facade of neoclassical and jazz music. Arguably the highlight of the album, these components hide inept skill and poor songwriting to a degree; however, they simply cannot assuage the album's plethora of flaws. Like a pretentious bastard shrouding self-doubt with big words and similes, like Stephenie Meyer and Rationalist with words, Sigh comes with genre juxtaposition. Further evidence of these self-righteous problems are found with recurring spoken word poetry (courtesy of David Tibet), and the faux-”grandiose” fashion a hodgepodge of Sigh's half-baked musical ideas are compiled. As if only to further the affliction of
Scenes From Hell, Sigh seem to be utterly incompetent at exciting a listener.
Oftentimes way too long and far too monotonous for its own good, Sigh has compiled a series of oddly disjointed tracks that sprawl out only to cover the same ideas over and over. Sigh's latest release combines eclecticism with monotony, tediousness, pretense, and incoherence to create a musical metaphor: When observing this album, one may see it as a puzzle without all its pieces-impossible to put together. Sigh's album is that puzzle, and until they find the other pieces, they will be doomed.
