In today’s overcrowded cultural landscape, very few bands can claim to be truly unique: of course, very few bands are Sigh, a group with a discography bizarre enough to truly boggle the mind. A record fusing avant-garde black metal with traditional Japanese folk music and a bucketload (hell, multiple bucketloads) of other sounds should be a chaotic mess, and in some ways, ‘Goh-Ka’ is exactly that. In others, it’s a wildly impressive affair.

Where 2022’s ‘Shiki,’ a much-celebrated release, saw Sigh channeling their various influences into a fairly direct, metal-forward package, ‘Goh-Ka’ is far more sprawling and grandiose in its ambitions. No one song could truly capture the sheer scale Kawashima and company are aiming for, and indeed opener ‘Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3’ leaves a number of surprises for later in the record, but the track does do an excellent job in establishing what kind of album you’re in for with this one. You’ve got everything from soaring lead guitars to retro synth tones to warbling shamisen at play— honestly, it’s a miracle that the project’s production is able to balance all these tones so seamlessly— and they’re all contributing to a release devoted to more skulking grooves and mysterious soundscapes than to out-and-out black metal aggression.

‘Goh-Ka’ is an atmospheric record, then, though Sigh’s versatile approach to songwriting is more suited to a suite of moods than it is to an overarching theme: the playful keyboards and rattling percussion that overtake ‘Anzenshokon,’ for instance, are delightful, but they aren’t ideas the band take forward throughout this hour-long exhibition. The saxophone solo that comes screeching in on ‘Jinmenjushin’ is a timely reminder that Sigh’s work is a never-ending grab-bag of musical ideas, and that approach is as entertaining as it is bewildering. Whenever the group are able to blindside you with something new and exciting, as they do wonderfully with the sudden bursts of speed and vigour across both halves of ‘Jigoku-Zoshi,’ ‘Goh-Ka’ is sure to put a smile on your face. You simply never know what’s in store with this one.

It’s for this reason that the record ends up shooting itself in the foot, in a sense, by devoting so much of its runtime to glamorous displays of musical arrangement— the plodding tempo that chokes much of ‘Kuso-shi 4, 5, and 6’ leaves you just a little too much room to dwell on just how bizarre and absurd its sinister sneers and angular riffs really are. ‘Goh-Ka’ is a sprawling effort, most definitely, and that manifests in a tracklist too enormous for its own good. The album is in no need of interludes ‘Shoso,’ ‘Kushakankyo’ and ‘Kuso-shi 7,’ none of which feel meaningfully connected to the songs they’re meant to be bridging. Even despite its vocoder usage and its majestic orchestral flourishes, closing epic ‘Kuso-shi 8 and 9 _ Mettaijakujo’ feels like it’s treading water, padding out a release that already had plenty to offer.

It’s difficult to truly describe just how jam-packed these songs are, especially while also considering that ‘Goh-Ka’ does manage to feel shockingly cohesive when all is said and done: its best moment read like a who’s-who of evil genius schemes, and it’s the reckless abandon with which Sigh attack their music that continues to make them such an enthralling act. Lead single ‘Unputenpu’ is blasting you with raucous rhythmic accents, infectious refrains and a phenomenal guest solo from Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt,’ coalescing into a song as bright as it is disorienting— you won’t find any reprieve in the following ‘Jinmenjushin’ either, which is bursting with some of the wildest progressive metal twists and turns out there. Sigh certainly know how to keep their listeners on their toes, and the likes of ‘Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3’ and ‘Jigoku-Zoshi 1 - Unkamusho’ are winners because of it.

You can say whatever you want about Sigh— there is certainly a lot you could mention— but what cannot be denied is that the Japanese crew are one of the most interesting and distinctive acts still making music today: ‘Goh-Ka’ is, first and foremost, a confirmation of exactly that. The record may not hit the bullseye every time, but that was inevitable when it’s shooting twenty arrows a second. More than thirty years since their debut, the band show no signs of reining in their immeasurable creativity.