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SIGH
Imaginary Sonicscape (Century Media)
Reviewed by Jason Thornberry
Metal, or really any music that ever attempts to be heavy, usually has quite a bit of distracting baggage that goes along with it. A band’s outfits, lyrics, song titles and hair can distract your attention away from what (if anything) they’re attempting to say.
In the eighties and early nineties the dorkiest, most macho, head-bangin-est, most stereotypical and comical groups, like Metallica, Pantera, or Guns N Roses, are what leaped to mind when my friend told me his new band was "metal." I kept waiting to see him put a scarf around his head, wear lip gloss on his eyelids and maybe start putting torn fishnet stockings on his arms.
Nowadays metal is completely different. Poison, Motley Crue, Cinderella, Bullet Boys, Dogs D’amour, Extreme, Warrant? All unemployed.
Today’s newer batch is full of either:
A) Hot tempered jocks with short/no hair.
B) Skate/surf rats.
C) Nine poseurs in Halloween outfits that’d make your seven year-old niece wet herself laughing (like Slipknot).
In 2001, if a band is ever capable of playing metal without being victim to it’s isms, I’m usually so surprised, I can barely summon my jaw from the floor.
Take the Floridian death-metal outfit Nocturnus. I saw them live eons ago, and the were trying really hard, man to be scary and un-earthly with their Disney’s Haunted House keyboards seeping into their balsa-lite songs, but they just couldn’t quite make it seem like they weren’t horsing around. I guess the joke was on them when people avoided their albums in droves.
Sigh, on the other hand make you forget their glacial, striking synthesizers for a few moments, as the "singer" seems to be vomiting blood while he passes a cheese-grater through his anus. Then a tinkly piano phrase is heard, and mixed quite high. Make no mistake.
This could be where Captain Beefheart pokes his head in and asks politely "What’s going on?"
I could rattle off the names of several bands who have attempted the whole "humorous grind-core & heavy metal" scheme, but I won’t. It’s a bore, and Sigh seem oblivious to convention simply by doing what probably just comes naturally. They aren’t kidding.
They’ll insert some Chick Corea piano and a female choir into an incensed tune about the death of pride and never even blink. A curious amalgamation of oil and water.
Japan is infamous for producing artists who just can’t be bothered to pay very close attention to the unwritten rules of rock and roll. Maintaining a straight face while being noticeably incomprehensible is something that hasn’t actually been done since Masami Akita (Merzbow), Swans, Can, Einsturzende Neubauten, The Boredoms, or Nina Hagen did it. They all (in one form or another) continue to do so, and if you would just put down those Offspring cds and listen to something a bit less obvious you’d be blown away.
© 2001 - Jason Thornberry