Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult

by Dayal Patterson

  In early 1990 Kassy was fired and the band became a trio, with bassist Satoshi taking over the role as guitarist, and Mirai taking up the bass. At this point the band adopted a new name, choosing the somewhat unusual moniker Sigh because, in their words, “a sigh can express a variety of emotions.” It is a name that continues to be highly apt, defining the band’s approach as much today as it did two decades ago. Committed to writing their own songs following this name change, the band nonetheless remained inspired by the eighties metal scene, a contrast to the many death metal acts springing up at the time.

  Sigh live in London, 1993. Photo courtesy of Nihil Archives.

  “I liked the early death metal stuff such as early Morbid Angel and early Deicide, they definitely had the thrash feeling and evil atmosphere, but it didn’t take much time before I started thinking death metal was not something I wanted. Obviously it lacked something eighties thrash owned, probably the kind of ‘fantasies’ that bands such as Venom used to have. It was great fun to look at the photos of Venom. You know, bands like Celtic Frost, Venom, Bathory, early Destruction had an evil image, the lyrics were very evil, and that’s what I wanted for heavy metal. But most of the death metal bands looked very normal. I didn’t like the over-downtuned guitar sounds or growled vocals either and I was totally sick of the Morrisound sound, which sounded totally the same on every album. It’s very hard to explain with words, but death metal missed some ‘vibes’ that I wanted.”

  The band’s first demos, Desolation and Tragedies, both released in 1990, stood out a mile from this burgeoning death metal movement, instead recalling the dark and foreboding atmospheres of earlier acts such as Sodom, Hellhammer, and Samael, thanks to the often ritualistic approach, raw aggression, and unashamed primitivism. These were followed in 1992 by the band’s first official release, a three-track EP entitled Requiem for Fools issued by Californian label Wild Rags. By now Kazuki had departed and Satoshi moved onto the drums (his third role in the band in as many years), while a new guitarist, Shinichi Ishikawa, also entered the scene.

  “Still today, I don’t know who was the influence on those demos,” explains Mirai. “But with [Requiem for Fools] it was pretty obvious—Slayer. Slayer came to Japan for the first time in probably 1992, I went to see them, and it was one of the best shows ever and [the first track] ‘The Knell’ was written in the excitement after that. It doesn’t sound like Slayer much, but I remember I thought we should take much a thrashier direction than those demos.”

  A participant in the international underground, Mirai sent a copy of the EP to Dead of Mayhem, but instead received a reply from Euronymous—due to the singer’s demise—who was hugely enthusiastic, and soon signed the band to his Deathlike Silence label. Through this connection, Sigh discovered an entire community in Norway that was dedicated to the same metal values as they were, although the resurrection of the term “black metal” was something of a surprise to them.

  “We sent out our demo to as many labels as possible but everybody else was enthusiastic about death metal from Florida. We missed the good old eighties days, but there was nobody we knew who had the same feelings, evil thrash metal was seen as completely outdated. Then all of a sudden, we started to know what was happening in Norway through Euronymous. He said eighties thrash was much better, and slagged trendy death metal, calling it ‘life metal.’ Through the mail exchanges, he introduced us to bands like Burzum, Emperor, Enslaved, and Darkthrone. [For me] black metal was born in the early nineties as a rebellion against the death metal and grindcore that was trendy back then. And obviously it had the perspective as a revival of eighties thrash metal, though I believe it was only in the nineties that people started calling bands like Sarcófago, Bathory, and Blasphemy black metal.”

  Characteristically exerting his influence, Euronymous convinced Sigh that they should utilize a darker image more in keeping with their music, and Mirai admits that the band did indeed adopt many of the traits of the Norwegian black metal scene (“the corpsepaint came from Norway, that’s a hundred percent for sure”) though he points out that very little influence was taken musically. 1993’s debut full-length Scorn Defeat saw a band that had significantly refined their sound, introducing a far more dynamic approach, a heavier use of synth, radically improved production and an epic and theatrical atmosphere. Mirai’s voice is more in keeping with the nineties “screamed” approach and is also notably clearer, all the better for communicating the wonderfully morbid lyrics of tracks like “At My Funeral.” By today’s standards the record might be considered a little clunky at times, but its ambition shines throughout, and it certainly broke new ground with its release.

  “Now it takes half a year to finish up the recording of an album, but I remember we recorded and mixed Scorn Defeat in two or three days. The writing process was much simpler, we just showed the riffs to each other at the studio and started jamming. We didn’t have the digital technology, so everything was so primitive compared to what we’re doing today. But I can safely say that Scorn Defeat has a special vibe. Even if we rerecorded it with the technology and technique of today, we’d never reproduce it.”

  While Scorn Defeat was a unique listen, it was only with the 1995 follow-up Infidel Art that the band would really begin to really cut loose from the metal norm. Sometimes seen as a transitional album, it was this opus that would first demonstrate the band’s taste for juxtaposing seemingly incongruous elements, with an almost cut-and-paste blending of differing musical styles, and sudden jarring swings between different moods. This was most noticeable on the ten-minute epic “The Last Elegy,” which begins with a cheerful, major-key, waltz-like classical passage before heading into far more despairing metal territories. Equally morbid and even darker than its predecessor, the album would nonetheless take listeners by surprise, not merely by the heavy use of synth and classical elements—which by themselves would have been enough to raise eyebrows—but the manner in which such ingredients were employed.

  Alternative shot from the Infidel Art photo session: Shinichi Ishikawa, Mirai Kawashima and Satoshi Fujinami. Photo courtesy of Nihil Archives.

  “I bought an expensive synthesizer called the Ensonique TS-12 after Scorn Defeat, which sounded brilliant back then,” explains Mirai. “The orchestra sounds seemed to sound very real—not now though—so I abused it. But to be honest, I was not sure if it was too much for metal. Now you can find many albums with lots of keyboards in extreme metal, but in 1994, I didn’t know any albums with as many keyboards as Infidel Art, so I was not sure if we were taking the right direction. Then I went to Norway to see my friends, like the Enslaved and Ulver guys, and somebody played me Satyricon’s second album, which hadn’t been released yet, and I was kind of relieved because it had lots of keyboard. I went to the rehearsal place in Oslo and found the keyboard they used which was also an Ensonique.”

  While it revealed an eclectic edge, Infidel Art merely hinted at what was to follow. In 1997 the band demonstrated that they had now immersed themselves completely in this approach to songwriting, thanks to the release of mini-album Ghastly Funeral Theatre and Hail Horror Hail, a full-length so bewildering that their label Cacophonous Records felt the need to add a warning to the sleeve.

  “This album is way beyond the conceived notion of how metal, or music, should be,” it reads. “In essence it is a movie without pictures; a celluloid phantasmagoria. Accordingly, the film jumps, and another scene, seemingly unconnected with the previous context, is suddenly inserted in between frames. Every sound on this album is deliberate, and if you find that some parts of this album are strange, it isn’t because the music is in itself strange, but because your conscious self is ill-equipped to comprehend the sounds produced on this recording.”

  “Strange” was something of an understatement, the album taking “episodic” songwriting to new extremes. The opening title track was a perfect example, exploding in a frenzy of upbeat, blues rock leads and deliciously catchy riffing, making Mirai’s frenzied screami
ng and sadistic slasher-esque lyrics (“Beyond all morality into insanity / I plunge my knife in you again and again”) all the more disturbing. After two adrenaline-pumping minutes the song lurches into a serene orchestral piece, before collapsing into cacophony and finally returning to the opening riff.

  “I got the idea from movies,” reveals Mirai. “That [juxtaposition] often happens for the scene changes, and it’s very effective, especially in horror movies. You know the happy song can sound scary in horror movies, it’s a counterpoint technique. I have a lot on my music palette, so I always choose the best music to express our feeling. Classical stuff can express something that the heavy guitar can’t and vice versa. Some people want to ‘understand’ music—‘why jazz in metal?,’ ‘why this sound?’ but it’s ridiculous. If you listen to Hail Horror Hail and feel it’s something scary, that’s enough, you do not have to ‘understand’ it.”

  This use of contrast continues throughout the album, with another striking example coming courtesy of “Invitation To Die,” a song that mixes electronic music, Spanish guitar, tambourine sounds, and soothing orchestration, overlaying this with unsettling lyrics that returned to the doomy, mortality-oriented territories of the debut: “We think it’s always someone else / But what if no one else was sacrificed / What if the victim was yourself? / Contemplate your own mortality / The curse that marks all of humanity / You can never know your final moment / But worse, you can never avoid it / We all are born just to perish / To lose all that we truly cherish.”

  Optimism is not a big part of this haunting and often testing masterpiece, or indeed any Sigh release. Darkest of all is the third track “12 Souls,” a genuinely chilling listen due—aside from its murderous lyrical content—to its discordant choir-like synths and confusing moments of psychedelic, nightmarish sound collage. But then, as mentioned, with this opus fear was the emotion the band were primarily aiming for.

  “My purpose was actually to create something scary, not to create something experimental. Twentieth-century classical music was used in horror movies like The Shining and The Exorcist, so I started going through twentieth-century classical music, and found other experimental stuff like John Zorn and Frank Zappa. John Zorn explains his juxtaposition as a parallel to the scene changes in movies. It was a big revelation for me, I thought then we could do that in the sense of horror movies, so we used Zorn and Zappa’s techniques and made them scary. To be honest, we were not sure at all how the album would be taken, even by the fans, so I understood that the label was totally scared of what we were doing. I was expecting that all the press would slag it off, saying, ‘This is not metal’ or something. But somehow, it got more good reviews than bad ones.”

  Indeed, reception to the work was almost overwhelmingly positive, with strong reviews in magazines such Kerrang! and Terrorizer, the latter including the album in their top ten of the year and later their top one hundred of the decade. Now recognized internationally, the band signed a deal with Century Media records, which came as a relief as they were somewhat unhappy with the promotion, distribution, touring, and creative interferences they were receiving with Cacophonous. Nonetheless, the label insisted they fulfill their four-album contract and the next release, 1999’s Scenario IV: Dread Dreams, was duly released through them.

  With the encouraging reactions to Hail Horror Hail, one might have expected an even more challenging follow-up, yet Scenario IV actually turned out to be a more accessible album than expected. Sure, there were still the frequent sudden shifts, the doomy Sabbath-esque parts, thrashy riffing, orchestral passages, and playful moments spliced together with wild abandon. All the same, there was a flow to the songs and the album as a whole that had not been present on previous records, with an abundance of strong melodies and catchy metal riffs distributed throughout the nine songs.

  “Scenario IV has a huge influence from Zappa and The Beatles,” reveals Mirai. “Being artistic and easy to approach at the same time, it is very important to us. Being artistic is easy. Being accessible is easy. But achieving both at the same time is very difficult—The Beatles and Zappa managed it.”

  Another factor that made the album more accessible was that, musically at least, this was a far less dark affair than previous releases. Similarly, the explicitly occult themes of the songs from Ghastly Funeral Theatre and Hail Horror Hail were no longer present, something which coincided with Mirai’s apparent departure from such interests in his personal life.

  “Ghastly Funeral Theatre was the peak of it,” he admits. “I was into all kinds of occultism since I was a little kid. I think the albums from Scorn Defeat to Hail Horror Hail have an occult feeling, from the songwriting to the artwork to the lyrics, it reflected my interest and practice (like chanting mantra) of occultism. The artwork of Ghastly Funeral Theatre shows how to curse somebody. But to be honest, none of [it] seemed to work [for me]. Actually in 2007, we rerecorded ‘The Curse of Izanagi’ which was originally on Hail Horror Hail. The lyrics contain a lot of a spell from an occult book I have, it contains the words to curse a person to death. At first it was recorded for a compilation CD in Japan, but the plan fell through. Then it was supposed to be released on seven-inch EP, but all of a sudden the guy who was supposed to release this died of disease. Then we were planning to use it as a bonus track for the Japanese pressing of Scenes from Hell. However, the CEO of the label releasing this all of a sudden killed himself. I can’t prove the connection of this song and the two persons’ deaths—to be honest, I don’t believe in these things at all—but it’s too sinister you know?”

  Having moved away from occult lyric matter, 2001’s Imaginary Soundscape saw a dramatic shift away from black metal territory, retaining Mirai’s black metal vocal style but minimizing most of the other extreme metal elements, instead blending heavy metal, psychedelic rock, and other more unlikely elements such as disco in an impressively incongruous manner. 2005’s Gallows Gallery abandoned even the harsh voice, instead utilizing clean-sung vocals, something of a bridge too far for Century Media, who refused to release the work. In an effort to explain the delay caused by this, the band fabricated a story claiming that the label had become concerned because the album had been recorded using Japanese World War II sonic weaponry techniques (“I never thought people would believe that people could get harmed by the songs on CD!” laughs Mirai), a tale they later admitted was false. Though of less relevance to this book, these two albums were received with enthusiasm by the press and listeners, though by this time their fan base had unsurprisingly shifted.

  However, despite appearances to the contrary the band had not discarded their black metal/thrash roots and 2007’s Hangman’s Hymn saw a swift return to violent extreme metal, complete with screamed vocals, aggressive guitars, and punishing drums. Like other works by the band, the album also included many non-metal ingredients, but unlike previous albums, the opus demonstrated a more homogenous approach to their integration. Soon after the release of the album, the band took on their first female member, Dr. Mikannibal, bringing them to a five-piece, since they had also taken on a new drummer, Junichi Harashima, in 2004, moving the multi-talented Satoshi back to bass duties.

  Dr. Mikannibal—who is an actual doctor of science—would contribute vocals and saxophone, not to mention a strong element of sexuality thanks to her scantily clad live performances. The band had discovered Mika when looking for a model for the inner sleeve of Hangman’s Hymn, at which point she handed Mirai (who would later become her partner) a sample of her previous work with a melodic death metal band called 29Jaguar. Appearing live with the band from 2007, her recorded debut occurred in late 2008, thanks to mini-album A Tribute To Venom—the band’s second homage to the Newcastle legends, following 1995’s live tape To Hell and Back.

  Mika’s role in the band has generated a good deal of interest in the group both from fans and the media, which is perhaps unsurprising given her eccentric character—eating insects, drinking cow’s blood, and recording naked for example—and past ex
ploits, as an extract from my 2009 interview with her in Metal Hammer confirms:

  “After [I] graduated from high school in California I lived in Tokyo for a year selling drugs,” she explains. “I lost everything, so I went back to my home town and started living with my family. Japan is a very difficult country for foreigners to live in because of the closed community and the extreme politeness. Even though I was born and raised in Japan, after spending almost four years in U.S. it was very difficult to understand what people were thinking. I couldn’t adjust to fit in Japanese society and I think that was the reason I got into drugs so badly. I got totally paranoid and almost wanted to kill myself, my mental problem was just getting worse and worse. My grandma used to be a teacher and because of her strict personality, I just knew she hated me so much. There was something she said that triggered me and I almost pushed her and hit her with something until her death…”

  Dr. Mikannibal and Mirai in 2010. Photo: David Hall.

  “…And you had some knives ready,” added Mirai, “and were even planning to blow up your whole house with dynamite or something? She was really good at science, even back then, so she could build a bomb if she wanted …”

  “I could,” she replies, “a simple one is not very difficult. But anyway I was totally paranoid, feeling that everybody in the world was trying to kill me. It wasn’t just the house, I wanted to burn the whole world.”