Japanese avant-garde metal pioneers SIGH have released their 15th studio album, Goh-Ka, available now via Peaceville Records. Coinciding with the album’s arrival, the band has unveiled a new visualizer for the sprawling opening composition, “Kuso-shi 1, 2 and 3,” created by Matt Vickerstaff.
Watch SIGH’s “Kuso-shi 1, 2 and 3” visualizer:
Following 2022’s Shiki and 2025’s I Saw The World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV, Goh-Ka finds SIGH once again venturing deep into their unmistakable collision of extreme metal, progressive experimentation, psychedelia, classical music and Japanese culture.
Mainman Mirai Kawashima considers Goh-Ka as personal an album as Shiki, both musically and lyrically. Its nearly hour-long journey draws from the likes of Celtic Frost, Voivod and Black Sabbath alongside horror cinema and traditional Japanese influences, with psychedelic and progressive rock providing further layers to the band’s characteristically unpredictable sound.
Even the album’s title carries several interpretations. Goh-Ka can represent 業火, the infernal fire that scorches sinners; 劫火, the immense fire said to consume the world at the end of time; and 業果, or karma.
At the heart of the record is the concept of Kusōzu, a tradition of Buddhist paintings depicting the nine stages of decomposition of the human body following death. The images serve as meditations on mortality and impermanence, confronting the inevitability of physical decay while encouraging detachment from beauty and worldly attachments.
That concept extends directly into the album’s visual presentation, with its cover and booklet artwork incorporating Kusōzu imagery. The recurring “Kuso-shi” compositions throughout the record are similarly connected to poetry based upon those depictions.
Goh-Ka Track Listing
- “Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3” — 09:11
- “Jigoku-Zoshi 1: Unkamusho” — 03:55
- “Anzenshokon” — 06:24
- “Kuso-shi 4, 5, and 6” — 07:21
- “Shoso” — 00:56
- “Unputenpu” — 05:41
- “Jinmenjushin” — 06:14
- “Jigoku-Zoshi 2: Tokatsujigoku” — 03:06
- “Kushukankyo” — 01:47
- “Kuso-shi 7” — 01:56
- “Kuso-shi 8 and 9 / Mettaijakujo” — 11:23
Joining Mirai Kawashima and Dr. Mikannibal on Goh-Ka are guitarist Nozomu Wakai, KREATOR bassist Frédéric Leclercq and drummer Mike Heller. The album was recorded across multiple studios before being mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD Studios in Germany.
Goh-Ka is available now digitally, on CD and across multiple colored vinyl variants. Order
Formed in 1989/1990, SIGH emerged from Japan’s early black metal underground before releasing their genre-defining debut, Scorn Defeat, in 1993. In the decades since, the band has continuously dismantled stylistic boundaries, incorporating psychedelia, progressive rock, classical music and countless other influences while maintaining a connection to their extreme metal roots.
That evolution continued with Shiki, their first album for Peaceville Records, and the 2025 reimagining I Saw The World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV. With Goh-Ka, SIGH push that restless creative philosophy into yet another realm.