Review by Tobias on June 24, 2001.

This is the first I've ever heard of Sigh, but what a hell of an introduction it was. "Imaginary Sonicscape" is the most fabulously innovative thing I've heard in metal for many years.

This band will creep you out, make you laugh, make you play air-guitar, rock out and possibly accomplish all three at the same time. In the words of Mirai, Sigh's black/death growler, "We consider our new album to be a 21^st century metal album with 70's equipment, 80's metal spirit and 90's digital technique."

Woven into Shinichi's death-rock power-chords is a delusional psychedelic set of keyboards that is really the foundation for Sigh's weirdness. The emotion behind this sound will range from being disturbing in the way that a chicken plucking the eye of a gutted elephant in your house would be to a bizarre almost comical parody of itself.

On occasion, the swirling psychedelic keys performed by Mirai can be verge on being overkill, but the guitars of Shinichi, sporting a strong resemblence to those of Iron Maiden, are very adept at keeping the album intensely interesting and sometimes just plain badass.

Although they've been compared to the psychotic jazz and rock fusion antics of John Zorn (produced Mr. Bungle, horns Naked City), I don't quite see the same level of what is sometimes unpalatable chaos, rather a much more dizzying sound with classic metal roots. The vision of this band is one that is certainly to be admired.

A lot of people call this band black metal. I have a hard time with that one, too; this is just too tripped out for black metal. Unlike the majority of other exceedingly unique metal bands, Sigh and the "Imaginary Sonicscape" are actually a hell of a lot of fun to listen to.

In my opinion, some of the highlight tracks on this one are the very rockin' opening track, Corpsecry - Angelfall, the incredibly unreal Nietzchean Conspiracy, and the utterly insane Requiem - Nostalgia. This is a disc built on hallucinogenic time-traveling visions of metal.

Bottom Line: If you're not already doing 'em when you listen to this album, it'll make you feel like the super-drug-monkey o' the day. This is cult classic.

Rating: 10 of 10