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DESCRIPTION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST:
Hail the return of the Japanese blackened prog metal gods, Sigh! It's been two years since their last record Scenes From Hell, and as killer as that album's heavier and darker feel was, this new one is in many ways a return to the lysergic frenzy of their earlier work. As always, the music of Sigh tends towards the weird and dramatic and eclectic, and this won't win any new fans among the hardcore black metal purists. If anything, In Somniphobia ends up in some really Zorn/Bungle style territory as the album races through a breathless array of stylistic shifts and sonic fuckery.
The baroque black metal of the lead off song "Purgatorium" ignites In Somniphobia with it's soaring guitar harmonies, stadium-ready hooks and Mirai's dizzying Hammond organ wizardry. Romantic violins and piano make an appearance in the song as well as some supremely crushing thrash riffing, and it really reminds me of the aggressive psych metal on their 2001 masterwork Imaginary Sonicscape (which is still one of my favorite albums of the past decade). Some slick saxophone work and psychedelic synthesizer freak-outs add to the epic galloping thrash of ""The Transfiguration Fear Lucid Nightmares", which gets even wilder when the choral voices come in later on alongside some Spaghetti Western style whistling and weird chirping electronic noises.
The title track is an amazing jazz-flecked prog metal epic, Dr Mikannibal laying down her expressive lines over a crushing Sabbathy dirge infested with all kinds of weird electronic effects and glitchery, before turning into a strange haunted house trip-hop mashup. Then there's the jazzy vamp of "Amnesia", which sort of sounds like a metallized, blackened Tom Waits, if you can imagine that. In Somniphobia is loaded with this type of stuff. Operatic vocals soaring over lumbering doom metal and electronic soundscapery, weird cut-up sound collages that sound like someone is spinning the dial through the entire radio band being beamed out of the Interzone, the crazed psychedelic funk-metal of "L’excommunication a Minuit", ghostly music-box melodies, grinding industrial noise, traces of Italian horror-prog a la Goblin, evil carnival funhouse
tunes, European and Japanese folk melodies all appear throughout the album, though just about every single song manages to stay rooted to a foundation of ferocious old school black thrash. Oh, and the ghost of Ennio Morricone lurks all over Sigh's music on In Somniphobia. The more I listen to this, the more I realize that it really does pick up where Imaginary Sonicscape left off, it's almost as delirious and psychedelic as that album, and if you thought that was Sigh's crowning achievement, you'll definitely want to check this album out too. The album is also spotted with a handful of shorter soundtrack-style interludes like "Lucid Nightmare" which combine evil spoken word passages with Danny Elfman-style orchestral creep, and the whole thing is spotted with guest appearances from a a variety of musicians both metal and otherwise, including clarinetist Adam Matlock, trumpeter Jon Fisher, Kam Lee from legendary death metallers Massacre, and Metatron from The Meads Of Asphodel.
Best new Sigh album in a long time, highly recommended for all fans of their wild carnivalesque blackened prog metal...
© CRUCIAL BLAST
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THIS IS A NEW, UNPLAYED ITEM. Please note that for LP vinyl orders, we usually remove the vinyl from the jacket prior to
shipment in order to avoid seam splits or any other kind sleeve/jacket damage that might occur during transit. This may
require that we open the shrinkwrap on the record in order to carefully remove the vinyl from the inside of the jacket (if
the record was originally shrinkwrapped). Feel free to contact us with any questions regarding this policy.
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experimental metal, black industrial, black psychedelia, noise rock, dark ambience, and other forms of cutting edge and
left-field heaviness. We also carry a carefully curated selection of books and other printed materials from the realms of
black surrealism and transgressive thought.
Crucial Blast is an independant underground label, online shop and micro-press specializing in cutting edge, transgressive,
experimental heavy music and related cultural artifacts, with a particular focus on avant-metal, black noise/industrial, dark
ambience, infernal psychedelia, and hardcore improv/free-jazz. You'll find everything from art-damaged European metalcore to
amplifier-exploding psychedelic drones to earth-shaking post-Ayler destructo-jazz in our listings, which we update roughly
every two weeks with both brand new releases and rare finds from the vaults.
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REWRITTEN, OR BORROWED IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM WITHOUT EXPRESS PERMISSION FROM CRUCIAL BLAST. COPYRIGHT 2000-2013.
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