Would it be correct to label Sigh's music in this album as 'avant-garde symphonic/melodic black rock'? It is symphonic/melodic, it is experimental, it is not black metal per se, and the guitar riffs edge hard rock. What's the album's precise genre in your book? Can you add "industrial" in the list of prefixes of the metal?

Googooboogie666

who cares, trying to fit one album into some artificial hyper specific genre category is stupid

mix of avantgarde metal and psychedelic heavy metal

/thread

We human beings love categorizing, bruh!


Metal? Does shrieking vocals merely qualify songs to be metal?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_CG5fUE3po

Thats not metal?

^ Sounds pretty much like melodic Rammstein or something.

Don't forget the trip-hop and jazz.


There's a lot of wisdom you're not seeing in this post. One of the reasons why Sigh gets the avant-garde label is because they don't fit neatly into any subgenre,

Imaginary Sonicscape is definitely their weirdest album and hardest one to peg down into any one genre, and that's just fine, it's why the band is labeled the way they are.

The OP here was just a really roundabout way of saying HEY GUYS I DON'T THINK THIS ALBUM IS METAL WHO AGREES WITH ME? anyway.

To me I always found IS more of a stoner album than black metal or anything else. It's probably one of my favorite ones of theirs outside of their earliest releases.

Stoner? LOL. That's one of the most ridiculous things you ever said. Saying it's industrial is almost as silly. It's pretty much a progressive/psychedelic/avant garde black metal album and one of the best ever!

I'm pretty certain there are far more ridiculous things I've said. Also note while I said it was one of my favs of their later work the last time I listened to it was well over 5 years ago and all I remember is it sounding stoner. Don't have any sort of deep interest in revisting it. But that's what it always stuck out as to me... and well will continue to do so.

It's Deep Purple meets Ennio Morricone meets whatever else... It has some black metal elements, much prog, a bit of film score, symphonic arrangements and then some more stuff. There's even a reggae breakdown for fuck's sake!

Seriously, if there's an album that could just be called "avant-garde metal" that one is Imaginary Sonicscape.

Much Prog, Such Mirai!

SLK, feel free to remain wrong, buddy.

Haven't heard it in a year or two now, but saying it isn't metal at all seems ridiculous to me - obviously yeah there's some rock in there, but does that qualify a band as being unmetal now? Sad...

This is by far the best Sigh album for me too.

Ha ha, I see what you did there.

Don't have a problem with doing so. It's my own opinion which I just shared. Hell you should be very familiar with doing the same. It's all in just time killing.

Lots of traditional heavy metal in there too. just listen to that first track, "Corpsecry".


Anyway, it's clearly a thoughtful amaalgamation osonic ideas, henece the title. But the bulk of the album is very much metal, yes, of course.f many different

Agreed. Your review in your blog(?) is very spot on too. Sigh's best album, followed very closely by In Somniphobia. "I" is my favorite Sigh letter, those albums are always wild(er) rides.

Definitely a legitimate black metal album despite the wide range of other influences, and as many have said, a brilliant one at that. Claiming the sort of riffs used on this record don't fit in black metal (let alone metal) only works if you've forgotten about the entire first wave, not to mention the mood, pacing and writing style of Mortuary Drape, Necromantia, Root and other significant bands. There aren't huge parallels, but remembering that black metal isn't actually norsk and necro in its origin might shed light on where Sigh derive some of their influences and why the OP of this thread essentially posits a non-question.

Well, it's on MA as well, it's a pretty fanboyish review haha. I agree that the "I" albums are all excellent and perhaps the best 3! Imaginary Sonicscape is the best one but Infidel Art is fucking awesome and so is In Somniphobia.

Really? Imaginary Sonicscape really doesn't have much to do with those bands you've mentioned. Mortuary Drape, Necromantia, (earlier) Root were all dark, morbid bands that very much fit into black metal as a whole. Sigh's bouncy, psychedelic, upbeat 2001 album really doesn't have much to do with black metal (oh yeah, there's raspy vocals that haven't changed too much from Sigh's earlier days... that's about it). Norse black metal doesn't even enter into this particular situation.

Oh yeah, the best Sigh stuff is from the 1990s! IS is still good, but I'd take any of their 1990s albums over it.

Pinning this bands sound down on Imaginary Sonicscape is futile I tell you. It sounds like avant garde metal with a side of prog rock to me though. I can take or leave the black metal tag though, considering the only things that are really black metal about it are some of the vocals and a guitar riff here and there.

I wouldn't call it industrial either.

I really don't hear much prog rock on IS, actually. And there's maybe one or two riffs that could be called black metal in any way.

It's obviously blackened psychedelic stoner progressive electronic avantgarde penis metal. Duh.

Yeah like I mentioned the parallels aren't massive or even readily apparent, and the morbidity and darkness of the bands I mentioned certainly doesn't apply on the album in question. Vocals aside I do feel that the heaviness, the "roots" and the weirdness of the album comes from a writing style and spirit inherent in black metal and as such it doesn't necessarily leave the genre entirely in my opinion, but that comes from my personal feelings about and interpretation of black metal. This is probably a tangential and debate-baiting direction for me to send the thread in though, so yeah, hopefully I don't, basically.

All this genre discussion and no one's mentioned the disco part...

As opposed to the Reggae part, the lounge part, the backwards baby laughter endong, the entire triphop song or the song that uses a speak'n'spell in the entire song?

I don't see why songle out the disco part in this hosgepodge of genres

Hmmm. This song in specific is so very much like Rammstein in so many different ways. That strange female vocals add to the feeling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DhSjx_D0lI

We are obviously hearing different things or listening to different aspects of the song as i don't hear much Rammstein in the song

Ramstein...just a stupid Laibach/KMFDM ripoff anyway. And no, not an influence on Sigh at all, I should think.

You know, if you're going to dismiss this album as a Rammstein knock-off, you could at least pick some of the more electronic-sounding tracks like "Nietzschean Conspiracy" and "Voices." The two tracks posted sound like a black metal band playing melodic heavy metal with some weirdness added. In fact, that's probably the best description for the genre of most of the tracks on this album. I don't recall Rammstein having a lot of NWOBHM harmonies or '70s rock riffs.

This guy does know that Industrial isn't the only electronic genre that has been used by metal bands.... Right?

As both a Rammstein and a Sigh fan I resent this post so very much.

Imaginary Soniscapes is one of metal's fruity gems of wonder with all kinds of rainbow twin guitar harmonies and strobe light synthesizer solos.