Sigh will release their new album “Shiki” on 2022/08/26.
Tracklist:
Kuroi Inori
Kuroi Kage
Shoujahitsumetsu
Shikabane
Satsui - Geshi No Ato
Fuyu Ga Kuru
Shouku
Kuroi Kagami
Mayonaka No Kaii
Touji No Asa
They also released an advance track, sounds pretty trippy and cool imo!
Finally, here’s some stuff from the official press text about the album:
‘Shiki’ marks the latest chapter in the Sigh legacy, and includes some of the band’s heaviest and darkest material for some years; a fine hybrid of at times primitive black metal akin to early influences such as Celtic Frost amid more epic melodic heavy metal riffing and solos. The album also utilises a whole host of instruments to give further texture and dynamics to the compositions and eerie atmosphere, incorporating traditional oriental instruments such as the Shakuhachi & Sinobue flutes.
The word “Shiki” itself has various meanings in Japanese such as four seasons, time to die, conducting an orchestra, ceremony, motivation, colour. The two primary themes for the album are “four seasons” and “time to die”.
The concept and artwork is based around a traditional Japanese poem, and on ‘Shiki’ Mirai explores how at this stage of life he himself is going through Autumn, with Winter coming soon, and so empathises with the contrasting sentimental feelings from watching cherry blossoms (a symbol of spring) in full bloom.
Joining Mirai and Dr Mikannibal for this release are Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator, plus US drummer extraordinaire, Mike Heller of Fear Factory, along with an appearance by longtime member Satoshi Fujinami on bass. ‘Shiki’ was recorded across multiple studios, and mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD studios in Germany.
Based on the artwork and the single, I anticipate this to sound like a more psychedelic, progressive counterpart to Graveward. And I love that album, despite what Mirai says.
The song is, as expected with a band that releases nothing but masterpieces, phenomenal. I also think the cover art is gorgeous (nice throwback to Infidel Art!), and the video is really nice.
I am surprised that neither Junichi Harashima or You Oshima seems to play on the album? Seems really odd to me. Not sure what lies behind this, but the album is gonna be amazing nonetheless.
Ordered both versions as soon as they were up for order. Can’t wait for this to be released.
Not that big a fan of Sigh for a long time, but love Scorn Defeat, and enjoyed In Somniphobia. One of the first interviews I ever did back in the day was with Mirai and we became friends and talked occasionally, but that was right after he got with Mika before she moved to be with him.
Joining you and Dr. Mikannibal for this release are Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator, plus US drummer extraordinaire, Mike Heller of Fear Factory and Raven, along with an appearance by longtime member Satoshi Fujinami on bass. What’s the band camaraderie and musical chemistry like between the members currently and what did each member contribute musically? As a drummer myself, I’m especially impressed with Mike’s performance!
I started writing the songs for the album in early 2020 and it was also the beginning of the Pandemic. Back then Covid seemed like a really scary virus and I didn’t think it’d be possible to gather around a closed place like a music studio, so I asked Mike to play drums for us as I knew he had his own studio and could do everything himself. Also it is true that I wanted to make an album with musicians who have no technical limitations. Now I am 52 and I am not sure how many more albums I can make for the rest of my life, and I didn’t want to get frustrated with this kind of limitation. After Mike finished up his parts, our own guitarist was supposed to follow, but somehow he started acting strange. He was really slow in answering emails and even if he sent the files, they sounded quite horrible, so I had to let him go. I’ve known Fred for a long time. He likes Japan and often visits here, and whenever he’s here, we hang out together. And of course he’s a great guitarist, he was the obvious choice for me when I found out that our guitarist wasn’t capable of it.
Mike’s contribution is very obvious, isn’t it? Definitely this album has by far the best drum performance in Sigh’s works. Also Fred’s guitar works are brilliant. You can hear a lot of truly impressive guitar leads. Honestly, our ex-guitarist was really bad at writing solos, so Graveward and Heir to Despair lacked great guitar moments.
That is interesting. So Junichi Harashima is still in the band, but You Oshima is out. And they’ve been playing live with Nozomu Wakai lately, so I wonder if he’s a new addition or just a live member. Which is interesting, because as far as I know Nozomu Wakai is mainly a very traditional heavy and power metal guitarist. Interesting.
This is a recent interview done as promotion for Shiki. It was kinda similar with Shinichi before the release of Graveward, but a bit different. Shinichi just stopped bothering and didn’t tune his guitar properly, and spent most os his time idolizing J-Idols. It was weird as hell.
On top of that, Mirai is most likely a hard guy to work with as he’s somewhat a perfectionist who’s never satisfied with anything, and his expectations of you are probably high as hell as well.
Also I saw no one else mention but the Japanese Edition has 2 bonus tracks:
11. 真夜中の怪異(オルタネイト・ヴォーカル・ミックス)(Alternate Vocal Mix)
12. 夏至のあと(デイヴィッド・ハロウ・リミックス)(David Harrow Remix)
Also, I’m struggling with the old fashioned script on that kanji, so this is probably as far as I get with that. Or maybe I should just read this book.
EDIT: @sume7 I figured it out! It’s 歎息, which means… “sigh”.
man 2022 has been such an excellent year for metal releases out of Japan. just barely checking this out but instantly an aoty contender, along with Asunojokei, Imperial Circus Dead Decadence, and Dir en grey releases
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