{"id":3833,"date":"2025-10-23T15:15:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T15:15:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/?p=3833"},"modified":"2025-10-31T14:16:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T14:16:31","slug":"what-a-sigh-is-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodandporridge.co.uk\/wp\/2025\/10\/23\/what-a-sigh-is-there\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Sigh is there"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It was my birthday a while ago and my lovely mother-in-law sent me a batch of rock-music-themed T-shirts as a present.\u00a0 One was emblazoned with the striking cover-illustration of the 1998 album Cruelty and the Beast<\/em> by County Suffolk gothic \/ symphonic heavy metal band Cradle of Filth.\u00a0 Cruelty and the Beast<\/em> was a concept album inspired by the legendary 16th<\/sup> \/ 17th<\/sup> century Hungarian countess Elizabeth Bathory<\/a>, who supposedly bathed in the blood of slaughtered virgins in an attempt to keep herself young-looking.\u00a0 (Fittingly, the album featured narration by the late, great horror-movie actress Ingrid Pitt<\/a>, who played Bathory in the 1971 Hammer film Countess<\/em> Dracula<\/em>.)\u00a0 Anyway, I\u2019d been waiting for an opportunity to wear this new T-shirt in public.\u00a0 The opportunity arrived on October 16th<\/sup>, when Japanese black metal band Sigh performed at Singapore\u2019s Phil Studio.<\/p>\n

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Actually, my T-shirt matched the macabre vibe established by the second support act, the Singaporean Tok Yathraa.\u00a0 (I couldn\u2019t get away from work early enough to catch the first support act, which was N3M3515 \u2013 read the numbers as letters \u2013 described intriguingly as a \u201cone-man ChipDoom Project from Singapore, armed with a Classic Gameboy, combining elements from Sludge Doom and Hardcore.\u201d)\u00a0 Tok Yathraa is a black-shrouded, hooded, white-faced, rather Bergmanesque<\/a> figure who, when interviewed<\/a> on the Filthy Gods of Metal<\/em> website, described himself as \u201ca one-man band which started on 16th May 2020\u2026 heavily influenced by King Diamond, Mercyful Fate, Black Sabbath, Immortal, S.M. Salim, Judas Priest and Wings.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 It might come as a shock for the classic Malay singer S.M. Salim<\/a> or, indeed, Paul McCartney\u2019s Wings<\/a> to find themselves included in such illustriously metallic company.\u00a0 In the same interview, he called his music \u201cbomoh<\/em><\/a> metal, a fusion of black metal plus heavy metal plus focusing on subjects of local \/ Asia ghosts.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Now fronting a three-piece band with a drummer and bass-player, Tok Yathraa put on a show that was simultaneously spooky and good fun, with his references to the ghosts and folklore of the Malay Peninsula nicely anticipating Halloween at the end of this month.\u00a0 He went down well with the small but enthusiastic crowd whom, at the beginning of his set, he encouraged to stand close to the stage so that things felt more intimate.<\/p>\n

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Headliners Sigh also have roots in the sub-genre of black metal, which values shrieking vocals, hectic and distorted guitars and copious allusions to occult, Satanic and pagan skulduggery, and is essayed by corpse-painted and pseudonym-laden musicians.\u00a0 Indeed, historically, Sigh’s black metal credentials are impeccable.\u00a0 They formed in 1989, heavily inspired by the black metal scene becoming popular \u2013 and soon notorious \u2013 in Scandinavia.\u00a0 A few years later, they were signed to the Norwegian label Deathlike Silence Records by Euronymous, co-founder of the band Mayhem.\u00a0 Yes, Euronymous was the bloke who\u2019d be stabbed to death<\/a> in 1993 by Varg Vikernes, of the band Burzum, during a period when the Norwegian black metal scene went down some very dark roads<\/a> indeed.<\/p>\n

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But in the three decades since \u2013 during which time, vocalist, keyboardist and bassist Mirai Kawashima has been the band\u2019s leading light and one, enduring member \u2013 Sigh have also distinguished themselves with their willingness to experiment.\u00a0 Their sound has incorporated elements from classical music, traditional Japanese music and elsewhere, so that it\u2019s earned such epithets as \u2018avant-garde\u2019 and \u2018progressive\u2019.\u00a0 Their eclectic-ness was certainly on display tonight.\u00a0 For example, their second singer and multi-instrumentalist Dr Mikannibal \u2013 according to Google AI, she\u2019s actually a professor with \u2018a doctorate in physics form the University of Tokyo\u2019 \u2013 played a shamisen at one point and a saxophone at another.\u00a0 That was when she wasn\u2019t pouring fake blood over her face from a goblet and shrieking sepulchrally.\u00a0 All good, ghoulish fun, by the way.<\/p>\n

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Their set \u2013 much of which was drawn from the 2007 album Hangman\u2019s Hymn<\/em>, which they re-recorded this year<\/a>, and from the 2022 album Shiki<\/em> \u2013 was a riot.\u00a0 It contained enough of the band\u2019s original black metal lodestone to keep headbangers in the audience happy but offered plenty of other elements to ensure the proceedings felt fresh and unpredictable.\u00a0 The band\u2019s look was great too.\u00a0 It was obviously influenced by such Japanese things as manga<\/em>, kabuki<\/em> and ukiyo-e<\/em><\/a> \u2013 the colourful woodblock prints from the Edo period \u2013 as well as by Tim Burton and the traditional corpse-paint and general gruesomeness of black metal.\u00a0 I noticed how the guitarists had painted-on stitch-marks at the corners of their mouths, suggesting Kuchisake Onna<\/em><\/a>, the fearsome slit-mouthed lady of Japanese urban myth.\u00a0 Though I don\u2019t know what the black mask (or was it black gunk?) covering the face of the drummer was meant to represent.\u00a0 Anyway, he looked pretty fearsome too.<\/p>\n

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As I said, the crowd was relatively small, but the performers gave it their all.\u00a0 There was a splendid vibe and I had a great night.\u00a0 In my heavy metal live-music memories, this experience will be up there with seeing Megadeth (supported by Korn) in Chicago in 1995, or Motorhead (supported by Saxon) in Norwich in 2009.\u00a0 It didn’t matter that the attendance wasn’t massive. I tried explaining this to Tok Yathraa, whom I encountered at the end of the evening, after Sigh had finished their set.\u00a0 He looked slightly bemused by my enthusiasm.\u00a0 Well, I\u2019d had a few beers by then.<\/p>\n

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One thing did put a dampener on the evening, though.\u00a0 Also after the gig\u2019s end, I got talking to one of Phil Studio\u2019s staff-members and learned from him that the venue will be closing down on November 2nd<\/sup>.\u00a0 This is thanks to an economically lethal cocktail of \u2018high operational costs, compliance burdens, regulatory red tape, and double standards<\/a>\u2019.\u00a0 It comes in the wake of the closure two months ago of the Projector Cinema, a rare place in Singapore where you could get to see movies considered too niche to be shown in the city\u2019s cineplexes.\u00a0 Oh dear, Singapore.\u00a0 If you keep on shedding your independent, alternative and idiosyncratic creative spaces like this, you\u2019re going to end up as bland, corporate and culturally airless as Dubai\u2026\u00a0 Or indeed, Edinburgh (see here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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    It was my birthday a while ago and my lovely mother-in-law sent me a batch of rock-music-themed T-shirts as a present.\u00a0 One was emblazoned with the striking cover-illustration of the 1998 album Cruelty and the Beast by County Suffolk gothic \/ symphonic heavy metal band Cradle of Filth.\u00a0 Cruelty and the Beast was … <\/p>\n

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