SIGH

[Bear 1817]

Brilliant band, brilliant song. There's nothing mroe to say really. Once again they renew themself without losing the classic Sigh-feeling. They won't disband before another album, that's for sure. They'll complete their "SIGH" once again. If it'll be and album or an EP doesn't mater. However, things will most likely take much more time from now on as Mikannibal is pregnant again, and hopefully everything will go well this time. But the disbanding rumor came from when Mirai said he didn't know how long he could be into Sigh and making this kind of music. That's all there was to it really.

 

Graveward is alreadythe album of the year. 10/10.

 

Saw them live a few weeks again and that was amazing. Way better than the first time I saw them.

 

And for those of you who care about vinyl, The Crypt will re-release Scorn Defeat, Infidel Art and Ghastly Funeral Theatre + Tragedies as standard versions without all the extras in the comming time. They already did release some superb versions of these, but demands have been high so they're gonna re-release them.

 

Their original releases looked like this, so it'll be something to get a hold of if you're into vinyl:

 

Sorn Defeat (3LP box)

 

Infidel Art (3LP box)

 

Ghastly Funeral Theater

 

I expect the standard versions to be good as well. I already own the versions shown over (as well as the other versions released by The Crypt), but I've already made sure I'll get the re-released versions too and I can't wait! And hopefully they'll release Hail Horror Hail and Imaginary Sonicscape as standard versions too.

 

 

The other Sigh vinyls on The Crypt:

 

 

As you can see, these guys aren't fucking around. All limited to 500 versions. 200/300 black and colour/splatter. Worth every single penny I've paid for them. Beautiful!

[Bear 1817]

TMF: What plans does Sigh have for this year?

SIGH: The top priority is to finish up the new album Graveward. It’s been taking almost forever, but we will finish it up soon. Now we have got rid of the lazy sloppy guitarist and recruited You Oshima from Kadenzza as a replacement, who can play the guitar by far better than Shinichi, so the new album will be a big step forward from the previous albums.

 

http://themetalfoundry.net/2014/05/23/interview-with-sigh/

 

 

While first reading this I thought he was just joking as we already knew that You Oshima would be a part of this album (guestign on a few songs), but people seem to believe Shinichi is out of the band and as the band hasn't made any more comments, it seems to be like this. Shame if so, because Shinichi is by far one of the the most unique guitarists within the realm of black metal, obviously dawing influence from bands such as Flower Travellin' Band which made him so unique. I love Kadenzza and consider The Second Renaissance a masterpiece, and while You Oshima is by far a more technical talented guitarist than Shinichi, he's far from as unique and interesting as Shinichi. So yeah, I can't say I am very positive about this.

[Zeus 7997]

The fact that they called him a lazy, sloppy guitarist after having been in the band so long is a shock. Was there some falling out between Shinichi and the band?

[Bear 1817]

Exactly, and that's why I took it for a joke. And he's still listed as a member of the band on their facebook. It's hard to say. And I haven't read anything about any problems in the band. There haven't been anything official about this. I don't have a facebook or twitter either, so I can't ask what's up with this.

 

I'm also very positive to You Oshima in Sigh, just not at the expense of the mighty Shinichi. Someone with a facebook or twitter should ask them about this.

[Bear 1817]

Some updates:

 

 

We have been rehearsing with our new guitarist, You Oshima from Kadenzza. We thought it'd take a while to get accustomed to each other, I mean we'd have to get used to his groove and he'd have to learn our own style. But we were completely wrong. We felt as if he had been playing with us for 20 years from the first session. A pleasant surprise for sure. His stage debut with Sigh will be on July 17th, the gig with Emperor in Tokyo.

 

 

So you guys want to know what's happened to Shinichi? Well, to be honest I want to know what happened to him. Here's the photo I had to send him to prove that his guitar was COMPLETELY out of tune. Now he even cannot tune his guitar right. Then what could we do other than asking him to leave? This is no joke or exaggeration. This is 100% sheer truth. We seriously wonder what is happening with him.

 

Must have been a lot more to this. A guitarist doesn't suddenly forget how to tune his guitar after playing for 25 years. He's either got some serious problems, or we're not exactly getting the truth. Shame anyway, as You Oshima isn't even worthy of cleaning Shinichi's shoes. No offence to You, but really.

 

 

Shinichi is the Hideki Ishima of black metal, while You Oshima is the Jeff Loomis or something, with a shitload of others. He's just not a unique guitarist.

[Zeus 7997]

Well, to be honest I want to know what happened to him. Here's the photo I had to send him to prove that his guitar was COMPLETELY out of tune. Now he even cannot tune his guitar right. Then what could we do other than asking him to leave?

How about asking him what's wrong? What are you hiding Mirai?

[Bear 1817]

He also added this: Well, actually this is not a real dirty laundry. The real one is way too dirty to be aired.

 

 

So there's obviously more to this than we know. I get the impression we're talking about either illness or heavy alcohol/drug abuse, or something like that. But to be honest, I don't ge tthe impression Mirai is too concerned about this so it might be some bad blood between them. Anyway, I'm not gonna put much into this as I don't know anything other than what Mirai have said, which isn't much at all.

 

I hope it doesn't go too long before he get himself a new band, though. Huge loss for the metal scene until we hear from him again.

[Bear 1817]

New interview with Sigh: http://questoeseargumentos.blogspot.jp/2014/09/sigh-english-interview.html

 

Confirmst there was bad blood between these two. I think Mirai comes of a both butthurt and disrespectful in the interview to be honest. No idea what good stuff like that will do. Especially the highlighted line:

 

Q: What is the current lineup of the band?

 

Mirai: Actually we changed the guitarist this year. I can say this is the first major line-up change in Sigh's history. Since "Scorn Defeat" was released, Junichi and Dr. Mikannibal joined us, but nobody left the band in our long history. But this year we had to fire our long-term guitarist Shinichi as he had so many problems both musically and personally. I wouldn't go into the details but you could write a thick book about his problems if you want. Anyway we had to ask him to leave and now we have You Oshima from Kadenzza as our new member. He's by far a better guitarist than Shinichi. You will tell that very easily when the new album is out. So the current line-up is:

 

Q: We can expect news from bands Cut Throat, Enoch?

Mirai: CutThroat is 100% done. It will never happen as our relationships with Shinichi are completely over.

[Bear 1817]

Mirai's been posting lots of rare Sigh photos lately. Maximum awesomeness!

 

 

Mirai frm the first or second ever Sigh gig back in 1990 or something.

 

Mirai from a gig with his Ramones cover band back in the early 90's.

 

Mirai from around the time of Infidel Art

 

This is the outtake for GFT back cover. We went to the river side at midnight for this photo shooting. I believe Yasuyuki from Abigail was with us, too. The riverside was shrouded by complete dark and we could not see anything and we realized that we had no way to push the button of the camera exactly coinciding to the fire breathing! So instead we just left the camera lens open for a few seconds and breathed fire during that and surprisingly the photos turned out to be much better than we had expected.

 

This is pretty much rare, evil Satoshi. I believe this one is from 1991.

 

This gig was hilarious. This was our third gig or so. We were asked to play at the newly opened venue in Tokyo. We didn't advertise the gig at all as we thought we'd be one of 10 bands to play. We were just a new born band and didn't have fans anyway. Then we loaded in to find out we were the only band to play that night and ended up in playing for 1 or 2 friends of ours. This happened 24 years ago.

 

Apparently the shot of the moment I failed fire-breathing. Should be around "Infidel Art" era.

 

And this is the one when I succeeded to spit fire. Looks pretty nice, doesn't it?

 

Actually in 24 years of Sigh's history, we were a band with two guitarists for a few weeks. I believe it was 1992 and we even played one show with two guitarists. It didn't work so did not last long though. And yes, Satoshi and I were young.

 

 

Satoshi's photo that was never used. Never used because of, well, as you see, the bad corpse painting.

 

Satoshi played everything from guitar, bass to drums with Sigh. He's a really talented musician. However, he was never good at breathing fire...

 

Unlike Satoshi, I have been always great at breathing fire.

 

I was short-haired. This should be from some time in the beginning of the 2000s. And I haven't had a haircut at all since then.

 

I believe this one was taken in 2006 or 2007 around the time Dr. Mikannibal joined the band. Somehow this shot was never used though.

 

 

 

 

Just posted the last two since I was at it, but everything above are as awesome as it gets.

[Bear 1817]

I'll just treat this as a regular Sigh thread.

 

 

Taken at London Dungeon in 1994. It was our first tour outside of Japan.

 

 

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Kinda off topic, but when did their female vocalist join? It doesn't sound like she's on their first demos.

[freundin 58]

She joined them in 2007 and has since been singing and playing the sax.

[Bear 1817]

From the tried-to-look-like-Venom-then-failed session. Should be around 1993. The biggest problem was that Satoshi was wearing a pair of sandals...

 

 

Love these pictures. They're looking very silly and far from evil, but it's got so much charm.

 

 

Also:

 

 

Here's what Metatron says about Sigh's upcoming album "Graveward".
Meads of Asphodel, vocalist, Metatron, has been asked to narrate on the forthcoming Sigh album, Graveward. The track is titled, 'A messenger from Tomorrow', and after hearing the demo, I can tell you its back to the psychedelic jazz soaked sonic Metal the band are renowned for, or as I call it, cerebral symphonies for the musically insane. Quiet astonishing stuff, now where's that bong of mine......

 

Interesting. It's especially interesting since Mirai said in the begining of the album that this would be one of their most straight forward albums ever. Not it's starting to look as if it might become on of their most complex abums ever.

 

 

People should check out The Meads of Asphodel while they're on it as well. Stay away from the last two albums, but check out everything before ...Jesus the Jew. Excellent band.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohooCrEncCk

 

At times very Sigh-esque, without being very similar at all. Very different atmosphere and feeling, but they still manage to create something that reminds me much of Sigh. Started out as a very original symphonic black metal band and got more and more experimental. Venom and Bulldozer meets Discharge and GHB meets Hawkwind, or something like that. It's just weird.

 

And to keep it slightly on topic the Meads... song features Mirai on synth. So it's not 100% off topic.

[Bear 1817]

Mer Sigh.



Shininchi


Another unused of photo which was unused because of the bad corpse-painting. Satoshi always had the problem with that. This bad-corpse-painting series will last for a while.


Judging from the date, this is the recording session for "Requiem for Fools" 7" EP.


Probably the oldest Sigh photo taken in April of 1990.




This is the outtake from the Requiem for Fools 7"EP cover photo shooting. This is actually Satoshi.



From the tried-to-look-like-Venom-then-failed session. Should be around 1993. The biggest problem was that Satoshi was wearing a pair of sandals...


Another photo session that never saw the light of the day. Should be around 92-93.


Another unused photo. I even do not remember why I had a photo session like this.


OK, here's the story about the Scorn Defeat artworks. The real original cover artwork was lost when Euronymous was murdered. Probably it was taken away by the police. Then Voices of Wonder Records sent us the four new artworks, three of which I uploaded below, fourth was published as the first cover. I hate all of them. They all sucked to my eyes, but they didn't want any more delays so I had to choose the least horrible one. However, once the album was out, so many people claimed the artwork sucked and finally VoW agreed to change it. It was Shinichi's one.




 

[Bear 1817]

A very old photo with Stevo from Impetigo.  It was taken at Stevo's house in around 1990. I was probably 20 or so. We went to the vinyl hunting and I remember getting Mercyful Fate's fist 12"EP just for $4.


A very personal fire breathing practice scene. It says 1992. Yasuyuki from Abigail and I were often practicing breathing fire with a cigarette lighter, I mean without a grandiose torch. Thus you can breathe fire almost all of sudden on stage.

 

This one is from 1992, the second gig with this line-up. Pre-Scorn-Defeat day. One of the guys we knew back then was claiming "Playing cover songs is very amateurish. If you want to be a professional musician, you should play your own songs." So we did all-Venom setlist.

 

 

Mirai and Stevo.

[Bear 1817]

Also, Sigh are back in Studio Moopies and are now recording the upcoming album.

 

 

 

And for all P lovers: Blood Music will re-release Gallows Gallery in a standard version now. Will be up for pre-sale from next week. The original is a beauty beyond words, so I am looking forward to this. Will grab one meself, two if there's two different colours as I expect it to be.

 

This is what the first press looked like:

 

 

Was limited to 200 copies, with a black one limited to 100. So 300 in all.

[Crube 585]

 

"Obviously it will be the thickest layered Sigh album ever."

I hope this doesn't turned out bricked like recordings that were produced by Greg Fidelman...

[Bear 1817]

To those who don't know, the SIGH "Gallows Gallery" Special Edition double-disc is available at Name Your Own Price on our Bandcamp. This was remastered from the original mixes by us - and many people consider this the definitive release of this album.

 

https://blood-music.bandcamp.com/album/gallows-gallery-special-edition

 

 

This one sounds very different from the muddy original mix and the overproduced James Murphy mix. Recommended for fans of the band.

 

I will add that I do prefer the muddy original mix to this, though. But this one sounds excellent nonetheless.

[Bear 1817]

 

"Graveward" is the 21st century's version of "Hail Horror Hail" with a slight touch of "Gallows Gallery". I'd call it Cinematic Horror Metal.

 

 

[Zeus 7997]

Where does that quote come from?

[Bear 1817]

Their facebook. Those are Mirai's own words.

[Bear 1817]

 

 

 

Sigh's bizarre, psychedelic, heavy metal masterpiece, repressed on vinyl!

 

* Highly-demanded repress of the quickly-sold out Japanese black n' roll masterpiece, pressed this time into a highly-affordable single LP, album-only copy (no demos LP).

* Almost 55% cheaper price than the first pressing.

* 140-gram+ Light Opaque Blue or Black LP.

* Remastered specifically for vinyl from the high-resolution original mixes.

* 350gsm single-pocket jacket, utilizing the high resolution original artwork.

* Black inner sleeve.

* New catalog number designation (BLOOD-010R) to differentiate it from the first pressing.

 

 

This is now up for pre-order on Bood-Music's official HP. I got home 4 minutes ago and have ordered both. 15 euros a piece. This shit will be worth your money.

[Bear 1817]

 

OK, finally the long journey to finish up Sigh's new album "Graveward" is done. Here are the artwork and the information. Release date will be announced soon!!! Please spread the word!!!

2 and a half years were required to finish up Sigh's 10th studio full-length album "Graveward", which embraces everything from vintage keyboards such as Minimoog and Fender Rhodes to real orchestral instruments.
Each song ended up in having more than 100 tracks and the total amount of the sound data exceeded 100GB.
"Cinematic Horror Metal" should be the best phrase to describe this most layered grandiose album in Sigh's history.
Inspired by a little chat with Fabio Frizzi, well-known for his legendary works for Lucio Fulci's movies like "The Gates of Hell" and "The Beyond", "Graveward" was composed as a homage to Italian zombie flick classics, Hammer Horror Films, and King Diamond.
Of course the musical influence is as wide as ever including aforementioned horror soundtrack composers (Fabio Frizzi, Goblin, James Bernard, Jerry Gold Smith, and John Carpenter), and their roots (Schoenberg, Webern, Stravinsky, Bartok, and Charles Ives), left-of-center rock / metal artists (Celtic Frost, King Diamond, The Beach Boys, Magma and Frank Zappa), Free Jazz (Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, and Peter Brotzmann) and some Central Asian traditional music.
"Graveward" welcomes various guest musicians including Matthew Heafy from Trivium, Fred Leclercq from DragonForce, Niklas Kvarforth from Shining (Sweden) Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ, Metatron from The Meads of Asphodel and so on. The cover artwork was done by Costin Chioreanu, who worked with Ihsahn, At the Gates, Deicide and Ulver.

 

 

 

I lost my boner as soon as I saw Niklas Kvarfoth mentioned. What the fuck is this cunt doing there. That's probably the worst decicion they've taken during their 25 year long career. Christ allmighty.

 

I can't say I am too excited by seeing the likes of Matthew Heafy and Fred Leclercq there either, but Matthew Heafy is excused just for being the massive Sigh fan he is, and they're both excused just for not being Kvarfoth.

 

 

However, the bold part turns me the fuck on and the artwork is nothing short of brilliant again.

[indigo 389]

That's very cool artwork.

[Bear 1817]

Blood Music, who released Gallows Gallery on vinyl, will rellease Graveward on vinyl as well, so fans of Sigh and vinyls will have something awesome to look forward to. Some quotes from Blood Music:

 

 

Just announced - Blood Music will be pressing "Graveward" on vinyl.

Have heard the final mixes (not yet final masters) and any fans of the gonzo era of Sigh should not be disappointed. It's got a lot more heavy metal / King Diamond type influence than the latest albums, veering more towards their black n' roll style of Gallows Gallery but adding in all the crazy orchestral elements of Scenario IV: Dread Dreams/Hail Horror Hail. Really great stuff.

Anyone who is worried about Matt Heafy involvement on the album probably won't even notice he's there. This is a SIGH record all the way.

 

 

"Graveward" final masters were finished today and got to hear it - album is really awesome. It's what you'd expect from Sigh - theatrical, a bit of old, a bit of new. Mix of many eras - Hail Horror Hail and Scenario IV meets Hangman's Hymn. Any fan of mid/later year Sigh is gonna love it I think. It's less pensive than In Somniphobia, more aggressive and way louder.

 

This is gonna be good. This is gonna be very good!