A descent into hellfire beyond death, a realm-spanning conflagration, and a fate which none shall evade burns in mind as Tokyo, Japan-based avant-garde metal trio SIGH meditate upon impermanence and karma while illustrating multi-stage process of putrefaction on this naturally eclectic thirteenth full-length album. Though it will likely be enough to suggest that ‘Goh-ka‘ delivers upon the nearly four decade developed signature of the band… that’d been what their previous album ‘ready manifested in deep introspection. Here their sights are set upon the journey of the soul beside the morbid horrors of decomposition, a vision which calls for a slightly more extreme-pushing, evocative work.

Impossible to sum, at least in few words, Sigh‘s trajectory has been one of rapidly increasing expressivity ’til strong personage. With a locus foundered in approach of nascent extreme metal they’d eternally linked their name with early second wave black metal before a penchant for cinematically charged avant-garde/progressive muse would realize and expand in volume. This would ultimately fashion them as one of the most noted Japanese metal acts worldwide, a consistent creative force since 1990; I’d been thorough describing and analyzing the band’s discography in review of their twelfth album (‘Shiki‘, 2022), and that’ll still serve the best primer for how I’ll approach ‘Goh-ka‘ today. It should suffice to say that their work crosses ones eyes between progressive maxim, crawling extreme metal fusion, and abstract introspection.

The retrospective inner-looking sights of ‘Shiki‘, which I’d described as “stoic maturation in abstraction” at the time, offered a reflection upon mortality from a point of great experience via bursts of jazz-fusion’d mania and Sigh‘s broad-reaching wild collage of interests. This follow-up intends to be equally evocative of their journey but potentially less myriad as they purport a different angle upon existential observance while also utilizing their broad ouevre to evoke the journey within. In marginally simpler terms ‘Goh-ka‘ sports a focused, unbroken yet no less bizarro throughfare in meditating upon impermanence. Taking inspiration from illustrations depicting the nine stages of human decomposition post-mortem the core theme submits Kuso-shi, or, poems writ in muse upon said nine stages.

The first three stages are glommed into the breadth of ~nine minute opener “Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3”, readily indicating the harmonized leads, mid-paced black-doom stance, reeling keys and snarling vocals at the heart of Sigh‘s signature. Traditional instrumentation, lyric translation and vocal melodies here are out of my depth but the grand Crimsonian float of this opener should prepare any long-standing fan of the band for a heavier yet no less insanely detailed hand applied throughout. The thrashing and shredding “Jigoku-Zoshi 1 – Unkamusho” and its Mega Man X boss music feeling intro follow, again indicating the blend of aggressive and progressive ideas will contrast strongly with the ponderance of ‘Shiki‘ at face value, a more prog-minded ‘Graveward‘ in some sense.

Granted there is nearly a full hour of music to detangle here and I won’t be so ambitious as to dig through every moment song-for-song but 70’s Black Sabbath was clearly on Mirai‘s mind when penning “Anzenshokon”, which brilliantly interprets a “Planet Caravan”-esque landscape in-between its heavy doom-guided riffcraft. The first three songs which kick off ‘Goh-ka‘ offer strong representation as a first act and my own interest doesn’t kick back in until the ear-worming “Unputenpu” reprises the impact of the opener in more succinct terms, carrying some of the most compelling tempo mapping on the album within its kinda folk-metallic, uniquely Sigh fanfare.

Much as I’d make the argument this is a focused work from the band of course most of these pieces are either self-contained adventures or appear split into parts. “Jigoku-Zoshi 2 – Tokatsujigoku” for example carries on with the thrashing aggression of its first part. Likewise “Jinmenjushin” and “Kuso-shi 4, 5, and 6” before it make sense where they are placed in the running order but each runs a unique gamut of their own in passage. Most every song adds to the total experience in order but few could feasibly represent the whole experience of ‘Goh-ka‘ standalone, particularly eleven minute closer “Kuso-shi 8 and 9/Mettaijakujo” which lands as an uneasy medley after two brief interludes precede it. It’d be reasonable enough to suggest the album’s unraveling thought process reflects its themes but the endpoint is far less impactful as the initial onset of rot.

No doubt a deeper studied fan of Sigh could pick through more thoughtful references to prior material or frame the experience more broadly but I will say that here about ninety percent of the time each piece appears to have musical relevance to theme in its overall depiction, something I couldn’t say about some of their more famously indulgent releases. ‘Goh-ka‘ generally appears as career-spanning, thoughtful and expressive as ‘Shiki‘ in every sense but their work here reaches for more satisfying extremes and ear-tickling intricacies per my own taste. Though I’d wanted the endpoint to match the profundity of the album’s other milestones it should nonetheless stoke the minds of longtime fans, bearing all of the signature character one’d expect. A moderately high recommendation.

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