Graveward

In summation: This album is shit, you are all shit, and your taste is shit. Yeah, you know whom I am addressing.

Trying to explain why Graveward sucks is a very difficult and tiring exercise, thanks in no small part to it being one thing that no other Sigh album is. Whether it is the very black metal Scorn Defeat or the mindbendingly alien (at least to those of us not well-versed in Japanese culture) Shiki, no Sigh album can be confused with those of other black, doom, or doomy black bands. Except this one. Graveward is a literal chord chord chord other chord chord chord album that brings the worst of Poptallica or Megachristerpersecutioncomplexdeth to mind. And trying to explain why without using a video and comparing the parts that actually matter, the instruments, is like pulling teeth. I can only say things like "boring generic thrash" or "chord chord chord other chord" so many times. But fortunately, the words coming out of Mirai's mouth do offer some relief in this respect. If you load up the album on this here site and open all of the lyrics, then do a search for "death", you get some real gems that bring to mind a thirteen year old who has never touched an instrument trying to come up with something to go over the top of a MIDI file he sequenced together in a few hours. I was originally going to list every. single. one. because they are all that bad that it is impossible to pick one that best illustrates this problem, but I will narrow it down to a few.

"Feel your dark and feel your breath, Feel your dark and feel your death" or "Millions of dreams waiting to be lost, A death to die, I will die my death" or a bit from the penultimate song: "Death is empty, death is filthy, Death is cold, death is somber, Death is eternal, death is certain". Yes, these are for real. And we have a number of other people who, in certain non-verbal or plain just verbal ways, tell us this is the best album Sigh ever made. This makes it ironic that their very next album, their best since Scenario IV, begins with a song that has great poetry about our oh so brilliant species and its difficulties with the truth. The short passages in Japanese translate as something inspired as well as inspiring. "Do you feel, The truth is dead, Or the truth, The truth does not exist, Do you feel, The truth is dead, Or the truth, It never exists". One of these groups is bullshit that comes out of the mouths of the like of Lars Ulrich or Dave Mustaine. The other exemplifies everything that doom metal is about, that our species is fukked, that our species is too blind to see that we are hurtling down a road to a long drawn-out painful extinction, and those of us who are aware will not be listened to until it is too late.

And this is to say nothing of the accompanying music. You can sway your hips in a suggestive manner to the rhythm that accompanies the first poetry in A Victory Of Dakini. You can pretend you are a conductor to the rhythm and harmonics of Divine Graveyard. You can ignore the proper poetry of Aletheia (quoted above, the truth is dead and so forth) and make up your own to fit the rhythm. My choice being "you are afraid... of the truth". I have spent decades in a part of the world that, whilst not Russia, is so piss-scared of the truth that we do not need "weapons of mass destruction" to get rid of it. We just need "weapons of mass grokking". Go look up the word grok if you are too in love with Graveward to get it.

My hands and forearms are too messed up by nerve damage for me to be able to seriously continue learning the bass guitar, but my lessons during my teens taught me to really listen to songs, to really figure out whether the song is as impressive as one is being told it is. Poptallica has never really been all that great, but the staccato one, two, one two three interspersed with a rapid legato of open notes in Fight Fire With Fire is an inspiring exercise to get you up to the level of playing consistently at a rapid pace. What little I remember of Graveward's riffs or arrangements on the other hand, sound to me like one, two, three, at most four notes strumming along ad nauseam. Sure, Divine Graveward is carousel music made more inspiring by vocal arrangements, but it is unusual and unexpected. You know, the two things that every real Sigh album has? Sometimes (such as with the most recent as of this writing, Shiki) it has those two essential qualities in abundance. Ugh. It is like trying to crack my head on the floor and find oil, making one understand what an abomination Graveward is. Being a garage band musician and a failing author does not qualify a man to describe a progression of chords for crying out loud! Graveward is literally an album that makes me feel suicidal...

Okay, rather than continue to beat myself up, I will try to sum this up in a paragraph. At first, I tried this album out on Spotify and was shocked at how unmoved I was. Then I tried a copy elsewhere because I thought maybe it was my response to the ad breaks that made me feel so horrible and empty after listening to Graveward for the first time. The absence of rage at ad breaks made it clearer that this album is uninspired and sounds like a bunch of lame impostors who resemble Bill And Ted commandeered the studio. Then confirming that that was what was really coming out of Mirai's mouth (aside from strengthening the previous sentence) made me angry. I guess not all of them can be winners and every band has at least one bad album, but Graveward is taking the piss. The recent groan of pain at the new season of Black Mirror inspired a couple of episode reviews saying that the episode works if you do not treat it as a Black Mirror episode. I half expect a Graveward fan to say that Graveward is great if you do not approach it like a Sigh album. But the plain truth is also that it fails on its own merits. Cliff Burton shat on it from a great height more than thirty years before it was released, as has Billy Gould. Good thrash or death is out there, and just like black, doom, or doomy black there is more bad than good, but one listen to good thrash or death is all it takes to see how Graveward fails on its own merits. Hell, the fact that I cannot even describe a singular musical passage from Graveward when I can remember passages from Scorn Defeat, Infidel Art, or Hangman's Hymn - Musikalische Exequien when I have not listened to them in at least three years should be all I need to say. But apparently there are a lot of Graveward fans who, as one great lawyer and true crime author put it, see only what they are taught to expect to see.

The extent of the hatred that Graveward inspires in a man who first heard Sigh thirty years ago and dived in head first should tell you everything you need to know. This is not a Sigh album, it is an album by Men From Mars who assumed the shapes and forms of Sigh and ran into the studio whilst the real Sigh were tied up in the basement. I really do not wish to waste any more time on this garbage except to mangle a quote from a hilarious(ly awful) film. Oi! How do you spell Graveward!? S-H-I-T.

Piss off.

A killer avant-garde black metal record which is injected with some pretty catchy 80s thrash metal and older heavy metal elements... My friends, that is what these Japanese avant-garde metal veterans had provided us with their 2015 tenth full-length offering "Graveward". Now I had been following Sigh for some time since I read about them in an article that talks about Øystein Aarseth's (Mayhem) Deathlike Silence Productions during my college years. Even with all the years gone by, this group still continues to extend their roots into new grounds with each and every release. With this offering, Sigh had once again got to great lengths to prove just how excellent they are in compiling insanely noteworthy and bizarre hymns which apprehend an untold amount of emotion and passion.

Just like the band's prior releases, "Graveward" had astonished me as Sigh had again displayed their naturally experimental and eccentric character throughout the whole material. For starters, the music in the album is not of pure black metal (though it offers the heaviness of the genre every so often) same as the band's earlier crafts. The obvious influences of thrash metal and classic heavy metal are all present in "Graveward", but what I dig the most about the album is how the band had utilized keyboard lines and the orchestration in a strikingly neat and trim manner. The keyboards are right on point and Mirai Kawashima did not exaggerate in using it, not committing the common mistakes of most modern extreme metal bands with keyboards.

The tracks here are diverse, original, and colossal. With a guitar section that covers riffs from thrash metal, power metal, neo-classical elements, a touch of doom, and even a few older heavy metal pieces; listeners will get a hell of ride listening to each song in the record. The riffs provided by You Oshima here are impressive and heavy, while the solos are quite appealing to the ears and it establishes a manic pace and an exceptionally exalted bar. All the tunes carry guitar work which delivers terrifying and visceral twists of extreme metal landscapes, with perverted riffs and arrangements that will coil a feeling of total amusement to the audiences.

Satoshi Fujinami's audible bass guitar, which does not go overboard and presses a substantial reinforcement to the tunes, is distinctly present in every part of the offering. Only a few extreme metal records these days contain a well-executed and well-balanced bass sound, and "Graveward" is definitely one of them. Dr. Mikannibal's saxophone playing also fits the songs in the material very well. In fact, she has some impressively beautiful saxophone solos thrown into the mix that'll conjure a sweet eargasm.

The drum work of Junichi Harashima is also pretty satisfactory. He may not have done anything too varied with his drumming, but he did a great job in matching the mood of each riff in the album. I also would like to praise his method of staying away from too much blasting to yield a very insightful cornerstone for the phantasmagoric demeanour of the rest of the music. The black metal harsh vocal style of Mirai also had once again made a strong impact on this record just like their previous releases. His raspy vocal rendering, along with a few clean vocals from Dr. Mikannibal, complements all the other elements here.

So to end this review, Sigh had once more impressed their fans and the whole extreme metal community with a glorious and sublime offering in the form of "Graveward". This material is really just incredible all around. I dig everything on this album and it is a broad in content work that'll draw it's listeners into an obscure world every time that you give it a spin and hear the opening notes. I highly recommend this record -- along with Sigh's early releases such as "Scorn Defeat", "Imaginary Sonicscape", and "In Somniphobia" -- to every fan of the extreme music art form. This is another testament to Sigh's impeccable power in the art form of extreme music.

Once again these avant-garde wacksters mess with our heads. Then again, over the course of (almost) two decades, these fine musicians have taken psychedelic music as well as black, thrash, heavy and death metal and completely flipped them upside down concocting a mysteriously strange yet refreshing brew of sounds. But then again this is Sigh, so it is quite futile to try and pin any sort of genre label on them. Since their inception, they have always played by their own rules so all you genre purists out there would do well to keep that in mind. I unfortunately can only compare this to their seminal masterpiece Hangman's Hymn as I have still not had the time to check out their other releases. Then again I sincerely hope to remedy that situation someday.

Both albums are equally symphonic but where the previous album had equal parts symphony and metal, this album kicks up the symphonies a good few notches to give a feeling of unsettling horror plus the riffs on the whole, are more technical and hard-hitting. Parts of this album could very well be the OST to a cult horror film. Ultimately I have to say that I prefer the approach of this album in comparison. "The Forlorn" merges the crazy atmosphere of the album with some with some nasty, face-peeling riffs and snarling vocals, making for one insane headbanger of a track. "The Molesters Of My Soul" and "A Message From Tomorrow" are more of the mid-paced variety, giving the band a chance to stretch their legs and bombard your senses with some widdly experimentation and brooding psychedelia. The latter is arguably one of the best songs by the band, really showcasing their prog influences. "Out Of The Grave" and the closer "Dwellers In A Dream" are of the much more straightforward variety (well, by Sigh standards anyway) and could easily fit on Hangman's Hymn.

Sigh's music to the casual listener might SOUND overtly chaotic as hell, but there is always a method to the madness on display plus the band NEVER ventures into pretentious tomfoolery or headache-inducing avant-garde simply for the heck of it (Unexpect, are you listening??). Every single part of each song has a point and fits into the bigger picture. Yeah being completely schizophrenic and unpredictable is all very well in avant-garde (some would argue and say that it is the point of the genre after all), but if you can't write a goddamn SONG at the end of the day, then there's just no point is there? Which is exactly what I freaking love about this album in general. Most of the songs are pretty straightforward in structure and follow the traditional rock/metal format but with some wicked salad dressing and toppings of avant-garde and unsettling symphonic/psychedelic sounds to boot. "Kaedit Nos Pestis", apart from being one cracker of an opener also has a psycho keyboard solo to boot, even confirming the band's ties and superbly subtle homage to 70's prog rock. Check out "The Casketburner" for some sublime piano playing and a smooth sax part that fits like a glove. "The Tombfiller" is without doubt the best and most fun song on the album with an insanely catchy keyboard intro and some amazing clean vocals in the mix ending with a phenomenal guitar solo. Epicness personified. Check out this song first if you're still unsure about the band and their sound in general. Same goes for the "The Trial By The Dead" as well, along with some insane vocal work that almost sound operatic in parts.

For all you newcomers to Sigh's music, I would suggest you start with one of their earlier album before coming to this one. Though I might sound like a prick for saying this, the marginal drawback of this album is ultimately what sets it apart from most other metal albums out there - its sheer uniqueness and insane cocktail of genres, textures and sounds. However much I love this album, there's no way in hell I can say that I'll listen to this every day. In any case, Sigh are pretty much an acquired taste (as most of you would already know) and while I can definitely say that I firmly sit on the converted side of the fence as far as their music is concerned, the occasional (let's say weekly) moments I do put this album on and dig the fuck out of it are worth the world. I think that says enough. Keep your mind closed and you will be missing out on some of the most experimental and innovative metal out there.

I was once asked to describe Sigh, and soon found my cognitive processes fumbling over themselves. Sigh is undoubtedly an avant-garde metal band, but such a tag comes with limitations given the wide breadth available to identify as avant-garde. I eventually settled on calling Sigh ‘auditory nightmare vision,’ a description that makes a fair amount of sense, at least to me. It is no well-kept secret that Sigh’s twisted music is as enjoyable as it is implausibly bizarre, and the quality of the phenomenal songs the Japanese group continues to vomit forth is always in tip-top form. “Graveward” catches the nightmarish proprieties lobbed in the air by the excellent “In Somniphobia” with just the kind of care to have left the eccentricity and quality unshaken while airborne. I’d call it more of the same, but this is Sigh; nothing is ever the same.

“Graveward” feels more straightforward up against “In Somniphobia,” whose travels to realms of bad dreams lived up to its name, though it should be noted this is hardly another day at the Mütter Museum. My general vibes are that this is a little more riff-based and less oriented around experimental structures; those odd influences dribble in rather than act as the musical foundation. Many tunes within “Graveward” (“Kaedit Nos Pestis,” the title track, “The Forlorn”) are centralized by a nice arsenal of hooky riffs and a lead guitar attack that is probably the most explosive and dynamic Sigh has ever presented, while the unconventional nuances subtly cover the void. Keyboards, orchestration, saxophone sections, and vocal effects are plentiful, and still remain fresh despite all having been rolled into the general idea of what to expect from Sigh.

At times I have a hard time describing why I’m aroused by this. “The Forlorn” and “The Molesters of my Soul,” especially the former, are mid-paced and creeping—not an oddity of Sigh to slow down, but usually experimental elements overtake the surroundings, unlike the aforementioned tracks. While weaker than the remaining cuts, they aren’t too shabby overall. The atmospheric crawl of “A Messenger from Tomorrow” moves the experimental flame into a haunting, ethereal void that makes a legitimate case to be the best song here. I personally find myself admiring the up-tempo tracks. “The Tombfiller” is just astounding, especially Dr. Mikannibal’s bouncy vocals during the chorus. “Out of the Grave” and “Dwellers in a Dream” show the creativity of Sigh rivaling the intensity, neither overlapping the other.

But on the topic of Dr. Mikannibal, it is important to mention that her role alongside Mirai Kawashima’s harsh vocals is amplified by these tracks, making her measure in the lunacy much more compelling. Guest appearances by Metatron and Matt Heafy (lol) play parts of some significance, though Metatron’s cameo feels a little underscored compared to his appearances on “In Somniphobia.” Then again, the art of the cameo has long been a custom within the Sigh tribe, and with Sigh, anything is possible. “Graveward” represents the Sigh we know and love, no derailments. With such quality at hand, it’s becoming quite the task to find a group whose unconventional approach to metal discharges such a profound aura.

This review was written for: www.Thrashpit.com

There is absolutely no one better at turning black metal on its head than Sigh. Every album since Hail Horror Hail has been unabashedly strange and creative. This album, though it has its own feel that no other Sigh release does, is technically business as usual, with the Japanese group combining musical elements that shouldn’t be anywhere near each other and somehow making them work.

While Graveward isn’t Sigh’s best album, it succeeds to an unprecedented degree in cultivating an eerie atmosphere. Whereas most black metal bands are almost solely dependent on murky production and a menacing combination of tremolo picking and blastbeats to scare your parents, Sigh strives to do this in ways that are far more imaginative and effective. The sonic elements thrown into this album are just as varied as Sigh fans would expect and almost all of them communicate some kind of bizarre, existential dread, be it the chill (and chilling) but occasionally dissonant lounge piano in ‘The Casketburner’, the vocals that occasionally sound like hysterical sobbing, or the melodically nightmarish violin in ‘Out of the Grave’ that plays over a quick, panicky black metal rhythm, only becoming more ominous when the saxophone joins in later on. Even the vaguely vocaloid-sounding chorus in Tombfiller (which actually sounds great, I swear) has an unsettling feel to it despite its sugary tone.

If you’re unfamiliar with Sigh, all the stuff mentioned in the last paragraph will make this album seem like a clusterfuck. Worry not, though, because Sigh once again manages to squeeze a million different bizarre ideas into this album, one after another after another but brings them all together with a consistent logic that seems impossible on paper. There’s hardly a moment of normal black metal on this album, as the keyboards and synths, which take on a wide variety of effects that range from stately to weirdly discordant, drive most of it. As amorphous as this album is, though, it never loses focus or seems to throw anything in just for the hell of it. Graveward seems to have a loose lyrical concept relating to a guy trapped in some kind of wretched afterlife desperately wanting to live again and just about everything on the album complements this cheery idea with both remarkable consistency and remarkable variety.

Despite all the weird stuff in this album, one of the most noticeable things about Graveward is the improved guitar work. Sigh found a great replacement for longtime axman Shinichi Ishikawa in You Oshima. Not to bash Ishikawa, but the new guy is clearly the superior shredder. While his guitar is unobtrusive during most of each song’s runtime (Graveward is all about the keys and its smorgasbord of odd effects), he makes most guitarists look like chumps when it’s time for him to solo. And when he does get down to business, which is actually pretty often, his tone is clean, with a sound almost straight from the new wave of British heavy metal, and his playing is loaded with impressive fretwork.

For its sheer ambition, inventiveness, and creepy atmosphere, Graveward is one of Sigh’s best albums. Everything comes together, with gongs, saxophones, spooky chants, brass instruments, vibraslaps, and synthesizers that sound like R2-D2 having a seizure all contributing to the spooky feel. The album’s unsettling nature comes from the fact that almost every element is at odds with the black metal foundation that still remains at this band’s core. While the mixing is inconsistent, with some elements being extremely prominent in one moment and utterly buried the next, the album as a whole is pulled off with unbelievable grace and skill. Nothing belongs in the traditional sense but thanks to mastermind Mirai Kawashima’s ability to make round pegs fit into square holes, all these nonsensical elements work together and form something that’s an absolute joy to experience.

Graveward, the 2015 release from Japanese avant-garde black metal veterans, marks the first album to feature You Oshima on guitar. For those not familiar, You Oshima is the master behind the project KADENZZA, and if you've enjoyed Sigh and haven't had the pleasure, check out The Second Renaissance album and within the first 2 minutes you'll understand why You joining Sigh is such a brilliant and perfect union. There are excellent guitar solos strewn all about in Graveward (the album blasts off Kaedit Nos Pestis with an example of the guitar-shred to ensue).

The production on the album made me unsure at first. In my car stereo, it sounds okay, so when I first picked it up and tossed in my CD deck, I was a little worried. On my PC speakers, though, it sounds pretty good. When I put headphones on, it shines. While I enjoyed the crisp production of Hangman's Hymn, what we have here is what I think Sigh ideally sounds like: raw and organic. The guitar is very low-end driven, and the band itself fills the lower half of the audio spectrum. The upper sonic half is reserved for the vocals, the brass and keyboards, and guitar solos. While that description may make it seem weird, you'll get it when you hear the album clearly (ie, with headphones).

The album has moments that remind me of Hail Horror Hail and Imaginary Sonicscapes. It's very refreshing to hear these bits, and the songs themselves are unique and just about all of them bring something different to the table. Nothing sounds recycled, but moreso it's simply Sigh refining and continuing to play with their new toys and ideas. I have to say that the brass section on this album sounds phenomenal and is easily one of the highlights for me. At least two songs feature brass swells that sound amazing, and the horn parts in The Tombfiller (and the chorus in particular) shine.

Mirai is on-point as always vocally and Dr. Mikannibal's contributions are there again to provide some excellent accents. The drumming is, as we've come to expect from Sigh, solid, yet not flashy in the least. The bass falls into the same deal, laying down a solid pulse but not breaking the mold. The guitar work shines, as they've given You plenty of room to flex in this new arena. I always enjoyed Shinichi's guitar work, but the comparison here is really black and white as to You's superiority. Beyond these instruments, Mirai is more reserved in his own keyboard solo moments, though Dr. Mikannibal has a couple excellent saxophone solos. The album is thoroughly laden with strings, choirs, and a plethora of other sound effects (The Molesters of My Soul brings the most Imaginary Sonicscapes vibes). There are some incredibly catchy choruses on several songs, heightened by the returning use of clean vocals accented by Mirai's rasps.

Graveward doesn't quite the the perfection mark, but it's pretty close. There are a few moments on the the album that aren't by any means bad, but they do lack the oomph and power of other tracks. But seeing as how impressive several of the tracks on this album are, it's a high mark to make them all out-of-the-parkers.

On the whole, this album is probably my favorite Sigh release. I gave it some space and have been listening to it almost singularly for at least a week now before I made that decision. If you're a Sigh fan, Graveward is a must have (duh, it's Sigh). This band intrigued me from the moment I heard Corpsecry-Angelfall on Century Media's website back when I had dial-up in 2003-2004, then faded off for a bit until my brother one day years later handed me Imaginary Sonicscapes and said, "you need to listen to this."

Plus, with You Oshima having resurfaced in the music scene, he's said in interviews he's heavily thinking about doing another Kadenzza album.

Winning? Oh, yes. Definitely winning.

Album highlights: Kaedit Nos Pestis, The Tombfiller, Out of the Grave, A Messenger from Tomorrow, Dwellers In Dream.

With Sigh’s latest release, Graveward, the band’s notably consistent streak of putting out quality albums continues. I was late to the party when it came to Sigh, only first hearing of them through 2005’s Gallows Gallery, but I’ve kept my eye on them since and began to love them as a group intent on bizarre instrumentation, demented atmosphere and extreme listenability. There persisted aspects of Sigh’s discography which slightly irked me and prevented me from considering myself a true fanboy, but it seems as if those factors were all but obliterated on this release.

In recent years I’ve grown more and more tired of “genre politics”, and black metal seems to be the one genre where this type of bickering remains the most. Sigh is a band which obviously has no interest in pigeonholing themselves into any particular genre, but because their early releases were in a much more black metal style, the attachment to the label persists despite little to no similarities with the general understanding of what is black metal in their recent output. While that tie to the genre continues, however, it seems noteworthy to me that the aspect that captivates me the most about the band is the same one that continues to draw me to black metal. The atmosphere and escapism present on this album takes a very different form from pretty much anything in the black metal genre, but it is definitely there.

The band has a unique talent in conjuring up bizarre pictures and scenes in the listener’s mind; A medieval carnival, a freakshow at the circus, a fucked-up version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The mood of the album is certainly dark and conniving, but at the same time the music is undoubtedly colorful. At some points there is a definite resemblance to acts like Arcturus and (one of the most underrated bands in metal, in my opinion) Le Grand Guignol. There are layers to the music that take you several listens to fully uncover, and there are several twists and turns which alleviate the repetitiveness that I felt listening to 2007’s Hangman’s Hymn.

Underneath the whirlwind of bizarre instruments and harsh vocals lies a solid foundation of chunky, distorted guitars and an unspectacular but very competent drum performance. This is another aspect that Sigh has greatly improved on from previous records. The production of the guitar-bass-drums basis of the album has a touch of life which was missing from the somewhat dry production of before. The experimentation which defines Sigh’s music so well was extended to the mixing process, and for me it was a risk that paid off heavily. The high-end seems to have been cut off from the guitars, bass and drums, leaving room for the wacky sound effects and synth to come out of nowhere and grab your attention. The dynamics are another thing which separate it further from a black metal label, with slow-attack strings and unbelievably bright brass sections throughout the duration of the album.

Each song has its own particular stand-out moments, whether it be the unsettling fx’d vocals among a disturbing xylophone-ish melody in “Molesters of My Soul” or the epic guitar solo leading into a massive, symphonic conclusion of “The Forlorn”. My favorite moment of the album takes place in the third track, “The Tombfiller”. The song shoots right out of the gates with an almost power-metal-esque vibe featuring a driving rhythm and majestic horns carrying the melody. A guitar solo and massive-sounding choir take you into the verse, with dueling guitars and harsh vocals taking center stage. It creates a perfect anticipatory situation for the chorus which features an insanely catchy vocal melody intertwined beautifully with harsh vocals, explosive horns and aggressive rhythm, resulting in the most powerful sound I ever remember hearing from the group. If one needs convincing to listen to this album, this track would be the ideal persuader.

If there was one word that would best describe the experience of this album for me, it would have to be ‘fun’. The initial listen-through might wear a listener out with the constant energy and madness, but this is an album that deserves to be ‘figured out’, which in my case only took a few spins. The album as a whole is excellent, and the tracks on their own are brilliant in their own way. It’s not an album I anticipate to reach my “all-time favorites” list, but as of right now, it’s all I’m listening to. 93/100.

Let's cut to the chase: this is some weird, wild stuff. Heavy metal, brass-heavy symphonics, black metal, occasionally 80's thrash-sounding hooks, neo-classical solos, JPop, saxophone solos...This has a little bit of everything, and you never really know when or where it is going to happen. "The Tombfiller" is a great example of just how well Sigh manages to tie all of these elements together into a deliciously enjoyable chaos. I am truly in awe of these compositions.

Given its tendency to change drastically on a whim, trying to give an in-depth description of Graveward's sound is no easy feat. One might best compare it to a piece of modern art: No matter how off-the-wall the end result might be, every painting needs a canvas and every sculpture a structurally-sound foundation. Sigh's is crunchy, squealy riff-driven guitar work, black metal vocals, and some pretty basic drumming.

That in place, Sigh proceeds to fling paint and slap clay like Jackson Pollock. But not unlike the artist, no action is haphazard. Take the first single, “Out of the Grave” for instance. On the surface the middle-eastern instrumentation, baroque horn flourishes, back-up vocals, and sax seem to be a nihilistic romp through the avant garde. But repeat listens reveal a detailed order to the various movements and changes. In fact, the carnival-like facades often conceal a traditional (and catchy) rock structure.

I have only one major complaint about this album: the production is constantly bugging my ears. It most closely reminds me of Nokturnal Mortum's Nechrist. Various parts seem to slide back and forth in the mix. Vocals will become overly loud while drums and guitar become muddy. Most sinfully, the gorgeous brass and synth work lack depth. Such masterful ordering of chaos deserves an organic space to work in rather than being trapped in the 2 dimensions of the phantom zone.

Final word: one of the most equally innovative and enjoyable albums you will hear in 2015. Furthermore, Graveward is a step up from previous albums in both scope and consistency. While some groups in the avant garde camp are happy to be weird for the sake of weird, Sigh makes the argument that the bizarre need not be inaccessible. Much like Leviathan's Scar Sighted, Graveward has earned Sigh a new fan through conventionalizing the unconventional.

Enjoyability=8.5
Musicianship=9
Innovation=9.5