Saturday, 11 June 2011

Sigh - Ghastly Funeral Theatre (1997)


Need to get back on the blog trail. A catalogue of life fails and problems have persisted recently. The bonus is I have managed to stock pile some good stuff for future posting.
The first will be this '97 offering from Japan's Sigh, the avant garde black metal group that have been confusing and alienating thicky metallers for over a decade. From the early black/thrash output on  Deathlike Silence ( you know ran that don't you?) right up to today's genre spanning amalgamation, they have always seemed to follow what ever the hell they fancied doing. I do remember the rumour that 2005's Gallows Gallery album used sonic warfare equipment perfected by the Japanese military in WWII to harm the listener. Sadly that was just a daft rumour to disguise the crap production job.
Ghastly Funeral Theatre marked a definitive change in the bands evolution. The Celtic Frost like guitar worship is still here but tempered and with an equal amount of keyboard and piano tinkling. Huge orchestral swathes of them open and close the album while the track Imiuta separates the more metal elements with a further piano interlude. Throw in a ton of folk and odd, almost classic rock moments and you have Ghastly Funeral Theatre. You might be thinking you have heard keyboard driven black metal far to much before and in all fairness I wrote this off first time around. I remember the album Hail Horror Hail in the same year, more for its striking cover art, receiving quite a bit of press. This EP and that album are where Sigh began to get interesting for me.



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