Sigh – Goh-ka

Japanese pioneers Sigh have always been in a league of their own, constantly pushing forward and developing their sound in unexpected ways. With a band this unpredictable, you might think the biggest surprise would be whatever strange direction they decide to take next. Yet with Goh-ka, the biggest surprise is something else entirely: Sigh have delivered an album that, by their own extraordinarily high standards, feels slightly less remarkable than what came before.

Almost four years to the day have passed since the release of Shiki, another extremely strong addition to the band’s catalogue. The biggest surprise about that album was that it wasn’t particularly surprising. Even without taking Sigh in an entirely new direction, however, it still moved the band another step forward and introduced their collaboration with Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator and Mike Heller (ex Fear Factory), both of whom return here. This time Leclercq focuses solely on bass, while guitar duties are handled by Nozomu Wakai.

Shiki demonstrated that Sigh don’t necessarily need to move in an unexpected direction to sound unique. Their particular combination of influences, arrangements and sheer eccentricity is so distinctive that even when they stay relatively close to familiar territory, there is still very little to compare them with.

Goh-ka is another album built around death, although this time the subject is the Kuso-zu – a series of Buddhist paintings depicting the nine stages of decomposition of a human body after death. It is suitably morbid material for a band whose music has always had an almost theatrical fascination with the grotesque.

The epic opener “Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3” is a fitting introduction. It combines avant-garde, progressive and black metal with traditional Japanese elements in a unity that is both incredibly complex and gloriously mad. Despite stretching beyond nine minutes and undergoing seemingly endless changes, the song maintains a surprisingly solid flow.

“Jigoku-Zoshi 1: Unkamusho” follows with a more direct black metal approach, but subtle elements tie it back to the opener and forward to “Anzenshokon”. The latter is one of the album’s highlights, moving seamlessly between slow, Black Sabbath-inspired riffs, traditional atmospheric passages and more experimental sections without ever sounding forced.

Elsewhere, however, the grip isn’t quite as firm. “Kuso-shi 4, 5, and 6” contains plenty of fascinating ideas but feels somewhat disjointed, while “Unputenpu” is a fine song that doesn’t quite stand as tall as the band’s best work. The appearance of Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt is certainly notable, but his presence is more memorable than the song itself.

Fortunately, the album regains momentum with a run of stronger material where flow, intensity and unpredictability once again work together. The finale arrives through a couple of tasteful interludes before the epic “Kuso-shi 8 and 9 / Mettaijakujo”, which rounds things off nicely, although even this closer could arguably have benefited from losing a few minutes.

Performance and production are generally strong, but the latter is also where Goh-ka falls slightly short of some of its predecessors. Compared with Sigh’s recent releases, the overall sound lacks some character, while the traditional instruments are occasionally pushed too far forward in the mix. Heller’s performance was spot-on on Shiki, but here his playing occasionally feels a little phoned in. His use of double-kick and tom fills can also become excessive, robbing several songs of some of their groove rather than enhancing them. Leclercq’s bass, meanwhile, is present but sits too far back in the mix.

None of this changes the fact that Goh-ka is unmistakably Sigh. There is a kaleidoscopic quality to what they do, with diverse and colourful combinations of classic heavy metal, bizarre permutations, traditional Japanese influences and a massive cinematic, almost theatrical approach. Even when individual elements shouldn’t work together, Sigh have an uncanny ability to make them feel like they belong in the same world.

And that is ultimately what makes Goh-ka such an interesting Sigh album. Listening to a new record by the Japanese legends always comes with some form of surprise, and this time the surprise is that the album is weaker than the majority of their back catalogue. That is not the same as saying it is a weak album – far from it. Goh-ka is still a strong, ambitious and highly distinctive release.

But Sigh have spent decades setting their own standards, and those standards are extraordinarily high. Holding other bands to Sigh’s standards might not be fair. Holding Sigh to their own standards absolutely is.

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