Album Review: Sigh - I Saw the World’s End (Hangman’s Hymn MXXV)
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
It’s natural that when one imagines Black Metal one pictures shirtless Norwegians hanging around in snow-filled forests, risking a bout of pneumonia. One rarely thinks as far afield as the Land of the Rising Sun, where multi-instrumentalist, Mirai Kawashima has been interpreting the genre in all manner of experimental ways since 1989.
Those of us at the Night of Salvation back in 2023 were privileged enough to witness the band play through the ardently black metal 1993 debut, Scorn Defeat, in full; and watch a second set at Damnation the day after. Their sixth album, Gallows Gallery was a straight-up avant-garde – if that isn’t pure oxymoron – collection of songs, the band’s first as a four-piece and one to feature clean vocals from Mirai.
In 2007 the band would return to their black metal roots with the concept album Hangman’s Hymns, the first to feature Dr Mikannibal – a genuine Ph.D – and a record which Mirai would go on to say is a favourite of his own compositions, but did not meet his standard in terms of production and execution.
So, come 2025, and Mirai had been given the opportunity to go back and re-record the album in a manner closer to his original intention.
The first thing you notice about I Saw the World’s End is the crispness and clarity of the production. Those “sloppy guitars” and the “monotonous drums” (not my words) have been replaced with crystal clear strings and pristine percussion; the orchestration rises to the fore, supplementing the vast ambition of Rex Tremendae – I Saw the World’s End and its classical bookending of high tempos and raging guitars. Finale Hangman’s Hymn – In Paradisum – Das Ende’s climatic charge is a grandiose use of repetition until the horns take over and bring the album to a close in a gothic, Cradle of Filth, style.
Purists may well balk at the fuller, richer sound and lush production, but this release is not here to replace the original, rather supplement it. Like being used to watching a film on VHS and suddenly seeing it in a 4K version, with everything clean and polished. Maintaining the film analogy, I Saw the World’s End can be seen as a Director’s Cut, with Mirai wanting to bring out the ideas the previous version hadn’t allowed him to.
From the very beginning, Introitus_Krie assaults us with all manner of additions and flourishes, think Mr Bungle’s debut, full of disparate elements pressed together; a toybox and a thunderstorm, along with choral music take the listener into Inked in Blood’s circus vibes and thrashing insanity; The Master Malice and Death with Dishonour advance those chops, the latter tune adopting something of a jaunty style while doing so.
Me-Devil suggests the influence of power metal and In Devil’s Arms nods directly to the vibes of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and, in particular, the guitar harmonies and galloping sixteenths of a certain Iron Maiden.
Sigh haven’t forgotten they are a black metal band and channel their inner-Emperor through the fast and frenzied The Memories as a Sinner, with its rampaging guitars and blistering, though spotlessly clean, drums.
I Saw the World’s End should not be considered a replacement for Hangman’s Hymns, rather a supplement; it’s what happens when a creator cannot shake the need to revisit his work and is able fix the things they see as wrong. While nothing is ever finished - only abandoned - that Sigh and
Mirai have been able to revisit and recreate their 2007 record in such a way is testament to the patience it must have taken to live with the project for those years.
Be the first to comment