Where too many labels focus on quantity over quality, Peaceville are notoriously careful over their signings, ensuring that their limited release schedule is given the care and attention it deserves, whether it be a new release (such as the astonishing new effort from Hellripper) or a legacy release, such as this effort from Japanese black metallers Sigh. As with reissues from the likes of Darkthrone, Mayhem and Candlemass, Peaceville has taken the opportunity to reissue 1993’s Scorn Defeat with a wealth of extras, which will appeal as much to the long-time fan, still clutching their treasured copy of the original, as it will newcomers intrigued by what Sigh has to offer. A double disc affair, even before you get to the musical content, it is worth taking the time to admire the effort that has gone into expanding the booklet, which features lyrics, period photography and a seven-page interview with the band. Such scene-setting is what sets Peaceville reissues apart, and it helps to place Scorn Defeat in its proper context.
The Album
Scorn Defeat has aged remarkably well. Opening with the Celtic Frost-esque of A Victory of Dakini, it’s clear from the outset that the band managed to hit the sweet spot between black metal raw and death metal churn, the bass underpinning the music with real weight, even as the guitars pop and fizz in a blizzard of treble heavy distortion. From the heart of this maelstrom comes Mirai’s ravaged voice, intoning the lyrics with mournful grandiosity. Even the piano emerges from the mix with admirable clarity, and if the playing is somewhat rough, the band’s passion for the genre carries them through, as they explore its boundaries, even echoing the nascent Pink Floyd in the track’s final moments. Even with the band’s ambitions fully on display, the baroque opening of The Knell maintains its ability to surprise, some thirty years after it was first laid down, as does the dizzying onslaught that immediately follows it. In contrast, At My Funeral offers a gothic grandeur similar to that which Cradle Of Filth would employ a year later on The Principal Of Evil… with the piano deployed almost whimsically over the blazing guitars. It all comes crashing down, however, with the crushing despair of Gundali, which features a dramatic spoken word performance set to a primitive funeral doom that sounds like the cast of The Wicker Man playing Black Sabbath covers.
With the band already having investigated myriad styles, the epic, nine-minute marathon Ready For War still proves to be an album highlight, its hulking presence at the heart of the album perfectly considered, as if everything prior had been leading up to this one gloriously theatrical outpouring of musical ambition reminiscent of Darkthrone’s similarly monstrous Snowfall. Short and to the point, Weakness Within provides the antidote, sweeping away the closing piano motif of its predecessor with shocking violence. It paves the way for the lengthy Taste Defeat to close the album on a tidal wave of doom-infused riffs, primitive vocals and arcane atmosphere. It provides a satisfying close to an exceptionally accomplished album from a band who would go on to even greater things.
The Extras
Featured on disc one, but not part of the original album, are three rough mixes from the sessions, which serve to offer some insight into how the production of Y Toyoda helped to subtly refine the album’s sound without sacrificing the atmosphere conjured by the band’s performance. On offer are rough cuts of The Knell, At My Funeral and Taste Defeat. Although these versions offer no significant revelations, they are enjoyable extras for fans of the band.
The second disc (cheerily titled Violence) offers up four demos of three tracks (The Knell features twice). An interesting insight into the state of the band prior to entering a proper recording studio, the demos are so rough as to be practically unlistenable, recalling the warped-tape horror of early Mayhem recordings. Yet, for all the lo-fi horrors inflicted upon the listener by the source, the band’s ambitions are present, with the piano somehow cutting through the mix on The Knell and the odd sounds of Victory Of Dakini even more unhinged. How often even hardened fans will want to listen to these demos is questionable and, if there is a criticism to be made, it is simply that these would have been better placed at the end of the disc – especially the bizarre, alternate version of The Knell, which sounds like it was recorded inside a cardboard box buried somewhere beneath the studio floor.
The real enticement for fans is a complete live set – the Scorn Defeat twentieth anniversary show – which sees the band airing five of the album’s seven tracks alongside a number of covers. Strangely the booklet, so informative in other ways, gives no detail at all as to the tracking of the demos or the location of the live show, although a brief internet search reveals it to be the same show that was released digitally and physically via Mort Productions (which lays claim to being China’s first heavy metal record label). Recorded in Tokyo on the 17th March, 2013 at the Asakusa Kurawood, the release appeared in December of the same year and, in true black metal style, was limited to 666 copies.
Not having access to the original, it’s not clear if any remastering has been attempted, but the bootleg quality of the recording suggests probably not. Nevertheless, like the live efforts from Mayhem, some of the beauty of the release is in the resolutely unpolished sound, and as the gasping horror of Gundali, here represented as a funereal dirge, bizarrely gives way to a crackpot cover of Venom’s Teacher’s Pet, it’s hard not to relish in the wanton absurdity of it all. What follows is a none-more-brutal ride across key album tracks from Scorn Defeat (Taste Defeat, The Knell, Weakness Within and A History Of Dakini), all of which are played with passion and as much power as the overloaded PA can muster. Make it past the first track, and you’ll find you succumb to the recording’s grimy charms, the synth choirs of Taste Defeat remaining defiantly intact even as the bass appears to be shaking the speaker cones free form their mounts. Aside from the album cuts, we also get Desolation from the band’s demo, a further trio of Venom covers (Schizo, Countess Bathory and Withching Hour), all of which would end up in studio form on the band’s A Tribute To Venom EP; and a Death Cover (Evil Dead). Like the aforementioned Mayhem recordings, much of this live disc’s charms lie in its raw-as-f*** production and, like a captive suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, the longer you spend in its presence, the more you find you become absorbed into its murky atmosphere.
Conclusion
Sigh’s place in black metal is assured and Scorn Defeat is a genre classic, worthy of such deluxe treatment. Minor niggles aside (the missing info in the booklet and the odd placement of the demo tracks), this is an exemplary reissue that presents a remarkable album in the most definitive form possible and is an essential addition to any extreme metal collection. 9/10
