Band:	Sigh
Album:	Scorn Defeat
Style:	Black metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	December 1993
A review by:	KwonVerge

Disc I
01. A Victory Of Dakini
02. The Knell
03. At My Funeral
04. Gundali
05. Ready For The Final War
06. Weakness Within
07. Taste Defeat
08. The Knell [Requiem For Fools EP version] [2011 Re-release bonus]
09. Desolation [Requiem For Fools EP version] [2011 Re-release bonus]
10. Taste Defeat [Requiem For Fools EP version] [2011 Re-release bonus]
11. Suicidogenic [2011 Re-release bonus]
12. Schizo [Venom cover] [2011 Re-release bonus]

Disc II [2011 Re-release bonus]
01. Black Metal [Venom cover]
02. The Zombie Terror [Far East Gate In Inferno compliation version]
03. The Seven Gates Of Hell [Venom cover]
04. Carnage [Mayhem cover]
05. Weakness Within [Desolation demo version]
06. Desolation Of My Mind [Desolation demo version]
07. Mentally Numb [Desolation demo version]
08. Death Throes [Tragedies rough mix version]
09. Sigh [Tragedies rough mix version]
10. Mentally Numb [Tragedies rough mix version]
11. Desolation [Tragedies rough mix version]

How cult does it sound back in the days for an underground black metal act from Japan signing with Euronymous' Deathlike Silence while the big fuzz was around the norwegian scene? Well, as cult as it sounds, Euronymous didn't live to see Scorn Defeat being released; had he lived until today, he would have been a black metal businessman and he'd be proud of Sigh.

Well, during that time the second wave of black metal was still growing up and Sigh, despite the generic black metal references, tend to differ themselves from the average raw expression due to the extensive use of keyboards, quite a heretic approach back then, along with the heavier rather than railway and neverending guitar riffing. Quite different from 1992's EP Requiem For Fools which had a more "politically correct" sound even in terms of production and granted them a place in Deathlike Silence. Apart from this, the vocals keep a sharper, almost reciting 80s thrash edge (even a limited cleaner interpretation as well), while the big thing back then was to keep your spitting frostbitten scream as much as you could and now that I think about it, Sigh had managed to marry the past with the future in the present during 1993. Who would have thought that symphonic black metal that would be born from Gehenna and would find its purest form on Dimmu Borgir/Limbonic Art (along with others) actually had its roots in the land of the rising sun instead of the land of far north?! One more good thing about their music is that, according to their atmospheric passages, they don't let loose the wolves of outburst all the time, they like mid-tempo passages and this helps the final outcome, without forgetting to present a faster edge.

Scorn Defeat is not the album that will change your life, but it's a good release and a pleasant surprise when you get to figure out a few more things concerning black metal and make it more clear in your mind. After all, listening to black metal music with quite good and clean procuction (always concerning the scene back in 1993), piano passages, atmosphere-evoking keyboard lines, melodic guitar chords, actually distinctive and not blurry solos etc was not the most common thing around and had they been nearby, they would have been one of Varg's targets. The good part of the story is that Japan was out of reach for Varg's ambitions of purity in the scene. Of course, if you're a Sigh fan it's more than interesting to see how they started their official path in music industry, different than nowadays, yet with glimpses of sound that would be prophetic for the future.

Ps.
Is it just me, or "The Knell" in the beginning is almost Stratovarius' main keyboard melody on "Black Diamond" from Visions three years… before its release?