Sigh has announced that their next album “GOH-KA” will release September 4, 2026.
From Peaceville:
Considered as somewhat of a natural evolution, yet an even more diverse leap over the already compositionally & dynamically accomplished ‘Shiki’ opus, Sigh returns with ‘Goh-ka’; a new highlight of atmosphere, technical mastery, & meticulously arranged epics of metallic grandeur.
Main-man Mirai Kawashima notes this as being as equally personal an album as ‘Shiki’, both musically & lyrically. From a musical perspective, if you were to place the main ingredients of Celtic Frost, Voivod, Black Sabbath, horror movies & Japan into a cauldron & stir it, you will get ‘Goh-ka’. Numerous additional spices such as psychedelic rock, prog rock & classical music are also evident over the album’s close to one-hour duration.
The primary theme permeating the album is Kuso-zu; a series of Buddhist paintings or illustrations depicting the nine stages of a human body’s decomposition after death, created to encourage meditation on the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death, & the detachment from physical beauty & worldly attachment. It openly shows the harsh reality that no matter how beautiful you are, you’ll be dead & rot sooner or later. And Kuso-shi is a poem based on these paintings. The artworks on the cover & in the booklet of ‘Goh-ka’ are therefore Kuso-zu themselves.
Among the additional contributors to the album, Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth notably delivers a special guest guitar solo on the track, ‘Unputenpu’.
This edition of ‘Goh-ka’ is presented on digipack CD format, including a 12 page booklet.
- Kuso-shi 1, 2, & 3 (09:11)
- Jigoku-Zoshi 1: Unkamusho (03:55)
- Anzenshokon (06:24)
- Kuso-shi 4, 5, & 6 (07:21)
- Shoso (00:56)
- Unputenpu (05:41)
- Jinmenjushin (06:14)
- Jigoku-Zoshi 2: Tokatsujigoku (03:06)
- Kushukankyo (01:47)
- Kuso-shi 7 (01:56)
- Kuso-shi 8 & 9 / Mettaijakujo (11:23)
8 Likes
Very very pleased upon first listen! Of course I’ll need some more time to gather my thoughts, but it’s one of those albums that comes from the alternate timeline where extreme metal coexisted with 70s prog. In that regard, it’s a rather autumnal album in contrast to Shiki’s winter.
4 Likes
I’m loving the new album and I will never get tired of hearing Mirai trying new things. He’s such a talented and interesting musician. Album is complex, rich in atmosphere, weird, fun, and above all just great. Can’t wait to spin this album daily for the next two months and see how much I enjoy it after I’ve really gotten into it.
I will say though, that unlike “everybody” else I’m not a big fan of Mike Heller. I get that he’s a really talented guy and all that, but he just plays exactly what I’d expect a modern extreme metal drummer to play. I just find him somewhat boring. I didn’t mind him on Shiki when it was released, but listening to Shiki now I’m not digging his drumming even though the album itself is fantastic. By far the weakest element of Sigh in 2026 as far as I am concerned.
2 Likes
Agreed on both points! It feels a little bit like Insomniaphobia and Heir to Despair’s sequel at times, but I don’t want to take away how uniquely weird this album is too. An accomplishment, considering this weird discography.
Heller’s drumming is… ostentatious. I like his percussion but when he’s on the kit he tends to be distracting. Thanks to him I think I listened to the Heir to Despair remake once, maybe.
2 Likes
“Hangman’s Hymn” is the one you’re thinking about. And I completely agree. Talk about overdoing things to a point where it becomes straight up annoying and unlistenable. I still refuse to believe that he had actually heard the music before he recorded the drums, and just recorded it following instructions from Mirai with time stamps and a simple decription of the riffs or something. The drumming is so out of place and odd.
But that is not my only problem. I think everything about it is worse than the original, and it’s really odd hearing real instruments carry less weight and emotion than midi-instruments from 2007. It’s baffling to my ears. Original album is phenomenal, and the drumming is such a huge part of that. Mirai always presented the album as Teutonic thrash meets German classical music and it’s such a great desciption, and the drumming is a huge part of why they captured that Teutonic thrash metal feeling. Simple, straight-forward, almost half-assed at times. The original is truly a brilliant piece of music. 10/10, easily.
2 Likes
Yeah, whoops. Hangman’s Hymn. Goes to show how much thought I’ve put into it. Such a weird release, especially since it occupies a spot in this tetralogy cycle.
Enough of that though, I’d say Goh-ka more than makes up for it. I think it might be Mirai’s most natural integration of Japanese instrumentation as well, perhaps moreso than even Shiki. It’s definitely a cool era for the band and Mirai’s vision is clearly being executed.
Also, I’m curious about the ten track sampler CD that comes with the limited LP editions of this album. Might have to buy a copy to find out…
2 Likes
