SHIKI

Well, this seems like a great contender for album of the year. I have said this before but Prog has been killing it this year. There have been so many great releases that I can tell will be regarded as instant classics for the next 10 years, and it seems like we'll get even more this September. So I wanna highlight an album from last month that has quickly become one of my favorites this year. The metal we got from this year so far has been at worst ok, but at best stellar, and this right here is the cream of the crop in terms of that experimental, highly pronounced progressive metal.

Sigh is a band that cropped up in the late 80s in Tokyo, Japan. Their current line-up includes Mirai Kawashima (Lead vocals, keyboards, sampler, programming, vocoder, woodwinds, bass, percussion, and arrangements), Satoshi Fujinami (Bass, guitars, drums), Junichi Harashima (Drums), Mika Kawashima, AKA Dr. Mikannibal (Saxophone, vocals), and Nozomu Wakai (Guitars). They were considered one of the first black metal bands in Japan, however, they had a resolve to experiment, which paid off by 2001 with their most acclaimed album yet, Imaginary Sonicscape. So far they have had a good track record of creating great albums that have an evocative, psychedelic, and straight-up insane music. They have an edge when regarding experimental metal music in the past decade, and they still have one even now. So far from what I have heard from them, they haven't released a single bad album, and I doubt they'll stop anytime soon. So, this is their 12th studio release, and I must say that this is probably their strongest album to date.

Minus Kuroi Inori, which is just a 16-second prelude, the first track, Kuroi Kage is one of the best openers for a metal album I heard this year. I adore how it has this intense and overarching build-up to a satisfying payoff with that intense, and almost sludge metal riff. The main focus point here is probably the Eastern influences. In the albums I have heard from them, they never really had any sort of sound and structure that felt very Eastern, only really dipping their toes into that whole cultural style on a few occasions. Here though is when you hear a more old Japanese sound. It is like the band is embracing their country's culture while also embracing their intense music, combining the two into a harmonious mix. It's honestly to god the most structural metal song I heard from this year, and I think if there was a track that can get someone hooked instantly to this band, it'd have to be this one.

I said before that the last track almost had a sludge metal riffage to it, well take that and give it a sprinkle of Mastodon-influenced sounds with the next track, Soujahitsumetsu. Besides the Japanese singing, this feels very reminiscent of that early 2000s sludge metal sound that Mastodon was pioneering with Remission and Leviathan. However, I never felt like they were copying that sound. Instead I feel like they are using it to break a new mold, revitalizing that sound further to where it feels more intense, more grandiose, and more fun. This song just has a fun feel to it all, especially at that guitar solo after the halfway point, how it just feels so fast yet so full of energy. It's just a wild track that gives you a whirlpool of awesome riffs that help solidify it as an awesome track all around.

These elements get expanded upon with Shikabane, where we get even more fun flavors to work with. I love how it goes from this intense piece to a more atmospheric and synth-driven piece that gives this early days horror movie vibe. I love it wobbles around, almost like the album is taking a breather after going through a ton of epic metal pieces, before going back up again to that heavy attitude once more. I think the drumming here is the main highlight, how it can just go from some intense and speedy styles to more gripping and slow builds. I think if your album doesn't have good drumming, then you aren't doing a good job, because to me the drums are the heart of a song. A song can still be good without drums, that much is evident in many genres that do not even rarely have any drums like new age or acoustical music, but when you do have drums, they have to be strong or else everything will fall flat. With that being said, they are strong here. Some fun playing and stylization with the drums go a long, long way. It's just a great track all around.

Like how each song just builds to some amazing moments, the album just keeps building, and here we see one such of those amazing moments with Satsui - Geshi No Ato. Oh my god, no wonder this was chosen for the promotional single for this album because it is top-notch. I adore how bouncy, and just plain rambunctious the first half feels, and it feels like that throughout the entire stretch of the song until it dissipates this more electronic and very light soundscape that just envelopes you even more to this experimental sound. You can tell, after 11 albums of trying new things and experimenting, we get stuff like this that shows how this band can work with that intense, but also very fun and lively progressive metal sound.

Oh man, and it just gets better with Fuyu Ga Kuru. This song just goes through such a journey, that hones in on that Eastern style the band brought forth in spades with this album, having woodwinds in this song while also having a symphonic mellotron in the back, creating an atmosphere in many areas of this song, to then go back to that energetic sound in such a smooth and well thought out manner is flat out amazing. This album is embracing the band's country's culture in spades, and honestly, it really works for a metal style. That Japanese sound found here really gives this album an awesome and unique flavor that I haven't heard before. It is a unique experience for me, especially before listening to this album, I was mostly listening to more Western Prog bands, so hearing this was a very nice change of pace.

Believe it or not but the album just doesn't stop getting better, in fact, this is probably the best album it has gotten, and that statement goes to Shouku. Such an epic track. The intensity, the heat this propels is just marvelous. It is so fast that when it gets slower and heavy, it still feels like a rush of blood through my veins that just gets me hungrier for more. I just have to say this, but the part at 3:50 is so good. It is just heaviness in musical form that just drives through your head like a needle on a thread. It instantly pierces you, no, it takes a chainsaw and slashes your chest in, and it's the best feeling yet on this album. When I first heard it, time felt stopped in its tracks, and I think that is such an amazing feat for a band to pull, to just make your listener feel like time and everything around them just stopped moving. It is a hard, near impossible feat, but it feels like Sigh did it without any issue at all. I just love it so much, and I think it turns this entire album into a must-listen for me.

Skipping Kuroi Kagami, which isn't a track but more of a 1-minute interlude, for the next track, Mayonaka No Kaii. This is where all that build-up pays off in the end with a really strong track. It fully gives you that one-two punch of that epic metal sound, with those historical cultures the band embraces on this album. A full lot of flutes, Eastern stylizations, and a juicy amount of epic progression and composition are to be found here, all in five minutes, making it not the longest track, but yet still making it one of the juiciest, most fulfilling tracks this album can have an end on.

However there is still one last track, and that is Touji No Asa. Where Mayonaka No Kaii felt like a fulfilling piece, Touji No Asa feels like a true closure to this album, not making me hungry for more, but appetizing me up for what is next to come in the band's strong lineup of albums. It is a good end to this album, not ending with a giant bang, but with something quieter, and more ethereally potent.

When I mean this is a contender for album of the year, I mean it. It does so many things right, and each song just gets better and better. This is an album that you got to run and listen to because it is such a treat. Everything on it from the sound, to the bare essentials of what makes a metal album work is done with such potency that it makes this one of the strongest, most fulfilling Sigh album I have heard so far, and the most fulfilling metal album I have heard of this year so far. Give it a spin, you will not regret it.