Sigihl are a young Polish act, formed in 2012 in the city of Katowice. The quartet, with former and current members of e.g. StrommoussHeld and Thaw, had this album, Trauermärsche (And A Tango Upon The World’s Grave), recorded, mixed and mastered in their home town with Krzysztof Kurek (drummer Grekh’s former colleague in Thaw). And they climb out of the shadow, these prophets of the Bringer of Light, marching under the flag of his sigihl.
Trauermärsche (And A Tango Upon The World’s Grave) is a very beautiful album, seen from the visual part (designed by famous Mentalporn), yet also seen from the aural part of the game. The album consists of five compositions, having a total running time of thirty eight minutes, and it gets released via young Polish label Arachnophobia Records.
The album starts with Daymare, which opens in a mostly spine-chilling way, with a monotonous yet very suffocative guitar-alike drone. After about one minute, the atmosphere turns even more grim and obscure. This is magisterial Ultra-Doom of the most ominous, darkened kind, ultimately slow, mega-heavy and totally oppressive. It gets expressed by means of dreary, somewhat hysterical screams, massive bass guitar melodies and nihilistic yet cool drum rhythms, but there is one very remarkable thing too: saxophone! That’s rather original, for I do not know that many releases with sax (or, for example, horn, trumpet etc. – cf. Abstract Spirit), but besides: it’s oh so fitting! And what’s more, the sax isn’t just a background instrument in this case. No, it might be the leading ingredient in several chapters. Most of the time it sort of replaces lead and rhythm guitar (who misses those right here?), but sometimes it’s even total frenzy, weird and noisy feedback with a certain craziness à la Mister Zorn.
This band’s Funeral Doom in general is pretty obvious and minimal, lacking of originality at the one hand, yet lacking of those sublime details too that make bands / projects like higher mentioned Abstract Spirit, Skepticism, Ahab, Wreck Of Hesperus and the likes so adventurous. But it might be too narrow-minded not to notice those fabulous hidden layers and great ideas that characterize this band’s sonic approach.