Sigh: Hangman’s Hymn: Musikalische Exequien (2007)

Sigh is Japan’s most batshit insane metal band, and this is the most “normal” album they’ve done since their very early days. The previous three Sigh discs were genre-hopping feasts that featured psychedelic keyboards, woozy orchestral segments, snippets of marching band, country rock, show tunes, ’70s boogie, reggae, smooth jazz, lullabies, metalcore/sitar breakdowns, you name it – all fastened to a framework of Celtic Frost-y thrash and classic metal, punctuated with the increasingly Muppet-like howl of bizarro scene gadabout Mirai Kawashima. When I first heard it, Hangman’s Hymn was shockingly uniform in its blend of symphonic black/thrash, which despite the band’s eccentricities is not a million miles away from the style plied by thousands of Dimmu Borgir worshippers across the globe. To be fair, Sigh’s second album, Infidel Art, flirted with the synth-black genre back in 1995, so the trio wasn’t just wagging their weiners at the Cradle of Filth kids. Plus, “eccentricities” definitely sells Sigh short. The memorability with which they imbue their unusual concoctions elevates them over many of their experi-metal peers, the strange shifts and juxtapositions built seamlessly into tunes that would stick with you regardless of the bells and whistles and handclaps. This is what saves Hangman’s Hymn from the pile of generic goth/black pifflers. The songs here are consistently exciting and engaging, every pompous swell of synth horns propelling Shinichi Ishikawa’s rabid German thrash riffs further into the Technicolor darkness. Because the disc adheres to a concept structure, musical segments are repeated, revived and revamped in various songs, a sonic narrative device of which I am inherently a fan. Mirai has brought back his frantic black metal scream, which appears alongside his charmingly nasal clean singing and intermittent outbursts of crazed cackling, all adding to the disc’s King Diamond-ish horror show vibe. A choir also graces the proceedings, its voices comprised of fans who sent in home recordings to Mirai (one was the vocalist for unfortunately disbanded Chicago death metallers Enforsaken). Drummer Junichi Harashima benefits from the best production Sigh has ever enjoyed, as this is their fastest material to date and Harashima’s blasts thump and kick exactly where they should. Yes, in most respects, it’s a “proper” metal album, one that would certainly appeal to a more general metal audience than their previous few masterpieces would. Yet, I must agree with other reviews I’ve read where the writer thought it sounded too normal at first, only to grasp its curious intricacies once they found themselves unable to stop listening to it. It’s not my absolute favorite of the catalog (that would be Imaginary Sonicscape), but it confidently maintained Sigh’s spot as Asia’s most fascinating and talented metal act. In the two years since its release, they’ve put out an EP of straightforward Venom covers, added Mirai’s saxophone-playing girlfriend to the lineup and toured the States. However, if their forthcoming Scenes from Hell retains the energy and professional sound of Hangman’s Hymn but delivers the variety of Gallows Gallery, their best work has yet to come.

“Death With Dishonor” (at Damnation Festival, Leeds, 11/22/08)

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