GALLOWS GALLERY

The Japanese Prog-Metal group Sigh all the way until they released Imaginary Sonicscape had been known as a productive aggregate, releasing at least one album within each two years of their career. There was quite a break afterwards and, as expected, there was a bigger impatience in the fans' anticipation before the album, which, unfortunately, meant more disappointments from the side of the listeners who simply did not hear what they had been hoping for for a long time.

The reasoning for the instant disappointment was as simple and superficial as it can get: "bad production" and "cheesy vocals". Speaking about the first case, that's quite true. It is a misfortune that after such a richly recorded album as its predecessor, Gallows Gallery was given a rawer production. As a consequence, you have to pay attention to what is going on more thoroughly, turn up the volume and experience a brilliant performance spoilt, although, from my point of view, insignificantly, by the quality of the recording. The new member's Junichi Harashima's drumming sounds as it is about to sink, however, that's the only really noticeable fault. Second, the vocals are not necessarily an unwelcome change for everyone but completely conservative fans, which a group like Sigh, presumably, is supposed to lack. From the debut album up to the Gallows Gallery preceding Imaginary Sonicscape, Mirai has used the same vocal style - his raspy scream, which had been expressing various emotions from grimness to triumph and excitement, yet remaining pretty much stagnant nevertheless. Moreover, not only is the fact of the change refreshing - the whole idea of harmonizing the vocals in this interesting, in addition to being new for the group, way in complex layers makes the listening more fascinating. The vocals are still as overexcited as they used to be on the previous efforts, someone can even say cartoonish or "cheesy". It is incredible to hear Mirai actually sing and harmonize his clean vocals, and his voice bears a certain resemblance to Rob Halford and Toshimitsu Deyama(latter perhaps due to them both being Japanese and having a similar accent).

Another noticeable difference one recognizes easily by just looking at the tracklist is that the songs have become shorter. On the one hand, there are less classical interludes and outros of all kinds, which is a pity, and the songs seem to lack substance albums like Imaginary Sonicscape contained. Conversely, since Sigh has made it a part of their trademark sound to make enough refrains to turn the already memorable music into even a catchier shape, it is pleasant how they wrote down 3-minute songs instead of 7-minute songs of about the same substance. No matter how much you enjoy hearing a particular chorus or refrain, when you start listening to a song and, having heard the chorus once, already expect to hear it six more times throughout the next eight minutes, you know that something is wrong. Fortunately, the music here does not lack any "meat", so to speak of, being both energetic and powerful and also containing all kinds of excellent ingredients that the music has kept for centuries.

The songs are catchy anthems in the spirit of such timeless classics as Iron Maiden, Deep Purple and Judas Priest, consisting of catchy anthems, spectacular riffs and amazing keyboard work from the guru, group's songwriter and vocalist Mirai, who does not try to dominate with his potentially virtuosic impressive abilities, and inserting great keyboard fills in the vein of Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson and Jon Lord into the music appropriately. The music remains avant-garde and over the top, implementing influenced from classical, rock, pop, metal and jazz, as well as various contemporary styles, taking all kinds of unexpected turns that seem impossible for mere 3-minute long verse/chorus based tracks on paper, but it all seems to work out well.

Most songs are done in the similar style, however, by giving the album a couple of listens you will be able to tell apart one song from another very easily, which once again proves the songwriting's accent on memorability. There are two songs which don't follow that criteria though, first being The Tranquilizer Song - a psychedelic, mellow symphonic lullaby, and the other being Gavotte Grim - a personal favourite. Every once in a while, Sigh produces an album with at least one song being something like this(not to say those songs have got anything in common with each other)and radically different from the preceding and following tracks. It is an epic, lush and brilliant mixture of Symphonic Prog and melodic Doom Metal, and the result is truly unique both for Sigh and for music in general. We can only hope that the group continues these kinds of experiments in their future career and perhaps try to create something with similar emotions and instrumentation. A beautiful, stunning track. The album also includes a remix of the track The Tranquilizer Song, with common features associated with modern electronic music and contemporary technology, and is another interesting experiment for the group.

Gallows Gallery, while not a masterpiece, is a great, creative record that will especially please fans of 70's Hard Rock and Symphonic Prog performed in a modern, unusual way, as well as avantgardists and fans of general Progressive Metal who are looking for something more upbeat and fun, because, let's be honest, "happiness" is a not a trait applied to the genre too often.

A pleasant effort from musicians refusing to stop their development!

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