Sigh - Hail Horror Hail (1997 Black/Avant-Garde)

Sigh - Hail Horror Hail


For people hearing a song from this recording for the first time, a likely reaction would be "What the hell is going on"? Don't worry, that's normal, the japanese masters of black metal even give you a little warning on the back of the CD: "Every sound on this album is deliberate and if you find that some parts of the album are strange, it isn't because the music in itself is strange, but because your conscious is ill-equipped to comprehend the sounds produced on this recording." Indeed, this is a very theatrical work, half movie horror soundtrack, half thrashy and evil black, but it's ALL genius. This, in my opinion is the best album in Sigh's career, and one of the best albums in Japan's history of metal. From dreary piano pieces, to epic orchestrations and even odd electronic fusion elements, what you've got here is a genre-busting piece of music. Whether you like keyboards in metal or not, you cannot deny Mirai's genius here. With such excellent layering and playing one might think that the man has more than 10 fingers. Of course, Shinichi's guitar work and Satoshi's drums are nothing to be reckoned with, though they're not doing anything really that extreme on this album. If you like things that go unabashedly outside the norm in metal, you will like this masterwork by Japan's Sigh.

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