Band:	Sigh
Album:	In Somniphobia
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Black metal
Release date:	March 12, 2012
A review by:	!J.O.O.E.!

01. Purgatorium
02. The Transfiguration Fear
03. Opening Theme: Lucid Nightmare
04. Somniphobia
05. L'Excommunication À Minuit
06. Amnesia
07. Far Beneath The In-Between
08. Amongst The Phantoms Of Abandoned Tumbrils
09. Ending Theme: Continuum
10. Fall To The Thrall
11. Equale
    1 - Prelude
    2 - Fugato
    3 - Coda

Sigh have come a long, long way since their signing to the Deathlike Silence label nearly 20 years ago. They may have contracted the avant-garde virus nearer the early stages of their career but with each release it has propagated and what was once a host body is now a fully mutated organism and the black metal elements that once made up its meat is now little more than a few straggly veins. I'm not complaining though.

Getting a foothold of coherant thoughts, let alone an opinion, of a new Sigh album is often as much of a challenge as deciphering the ingredients used to make it, which in the case of In Somniphobia may or may not include the likes of keyboard, brass, piano, sonic weaponry, funk, violated owl, accordion, jazz, disgruntled postal worker, industrial dub, Troy, organs and so on and so forth. The natural result is a veritable melting pot of culture and world music, east meets west, insane meets weird, smoky, psychedelic circus jazz meets thrashing black metal. It's a futile excercise attempting to label, bring reason or apply a formula here. Sigh are Sigh, and Sigh do what Sigh do best.

Broadly speaking In Somniphobia is split into two distinct parts. Curiously this split takes place after the second track. The first couple of numbers, "Purgatorium" and "The Transfiguration Fear" are galloping, solo-inflected, insanely catchy heavy metal numbers choc full of typical Sigh bombasticity and my word, they are a lot of fun. It's after this that the album truly tumbles down the rabbit hole and the guitars themselves take a back seat and become the seams rather than the primal focus. Beginning with "Opening Theme: Lucid Nightmare" Sigh make it abundantly clear that this is where the album really begins, the two previous tracks a mere prologue to the ensuing madness. What follows is an exercise in ADD-inflicted randomness and experimental pastiches, loosely tied together by underlying guitar and the odd solo and lead. That being said, for the most part it works wonderfully. A gloriously colourful and trippy journey.

The balance in sound is what instantly elevates this above 2011's Scenes From Hell, there's a thinness to the production that lends itself well, particularly to the vocals and guitar which is tonally similar to Hangman's Hymn, allowing for a wide breadth of freedom for the foreign instruments to make their marks. "Equale" for example is a beautifully constructed highlight: driving, twisting, melodic and melancholically permeated by Mirai's rasps of "Kill me now!", sustaining Sigh's morbid death fetishism. Worth mentioning too are the guest appearances, The Meads Of Asphodel's Metatron in particular who does his gruff English vocal thing. Just more pages to this bizarre and endearing story.

Sigh have always had a great audience which is unsurprising as they're frequently rewarded with exceptional music that boasts a singular, unique edge and while this may not be the resounding success that Hangman's Hymn or Imaginary Sonicscape were it's hard to imagine having more fun without taking off your clothes and investing in an extra large tub of bacon grease. Somniphobia literally means fear of sleep but when you're In Somniphobia you won't want to.