It’s easy to love Sigh. It’s also easy to find them really annoying. Starting off as a Japanese branch of Black Metal’s second wave, Sigh has since mutated in all sorts of bizarre and interesting ways, integrating everything from classical influences to jazz breakdowns to having a nude, blood-smeared woman shrieking out vocals over Venom covers. As one does. At best, it made them a glorious thing to hear. At worst, it just sounded like a formless din.

The end result is like that really cool, eccentric friend of yours who’s always fun to be around and lives a fascinating life, but also gets caught half-naked up a tree and dyes their pubes lime green, because idiosyncrasy is always part genius, part LSD-spiked pangolin trying to have sex with your sofa.

The good news, of course, is that the band’s new album, Heir to Despair, is their most consistent offering to date. The songs may still consist of all manner of stylistic kitchen sink moments, but this time they also manage to keep a tight grip on the hook and the overall feel of each song.

This doesn’t mean that the album doesn’t present as hat-stand as ever, mind you! Sitars, theremins, Cynic-style distorted vocals, more signature changes than you can shake a feather duster at, and crazed tangents leap in and out. Where else can you hear a song (‘Heresy I Oblivium’) which starts out like a cross between Throbbing Gristle, Sade and Portishead, before blasting into full on, epic Industrial Metal? Or a follow-up track (‘Heresy II Acosmism’) that sounds like a Speak & Spell that’s about to stab you in your sleep? (Fans of Splatoon may even recognize one gurgling moment, which sounds a lot like Off the Hook stole the mike while lead madman Mirai Kawashima and chums were presumably trying out a harpsichord in the next room.)

Yet as songs like ‘Hunters Not Horned’, ‘Hands of the String Puller’ and ‘Althesia’ demonstrate, Heir To Despair is, first and foremost, a focused and wonderfully compelling metal album. Oh, it remains as bat-shit as ever, but, crucially, it has the structure and discipline where it matters, and some wonderfully catchy and rousing music results. It’s Sigh’s most consistent, masterful album yet.

8.0/10

ALEXANDER HAY