Band:	Plateau Sigma
Album:	Symbols - The Sleeping Harmony Of The World Below
Style:	Doom metal
Release date:	October 24, 2019
A review by:	RaduP

01. Heterochromia
02. Ouija And The Qvantvm
03. A Parody Of Medea
04. To Mnemosine's Bittersweet Fruit
05. The Moon Made Flesh
06. The White Virgin
07. She Kept The Sacred Fire, Still
08. The Child And The Presence

Why stick to one subgenre of doom and why release your album on the 25th like everyone else?

Two things stand out about Symbols - The Sleeping Harmony Of The World Below, which I've already alluded to. First it was released on the 24th October for some reason, when a shitload of album including ones from Sunn O))), Swans, Mayhem, Leprous and Alcest to name a few were released on the 25th. But that will be something forgotten in time once nobody really looks at the "New Releases" page anymore. What Symbols - The Sleeping Harmony Of The World Below will be remembered for is its unique take on doom.

Perhaps unique is quite a strong word to use here, I'm sure if I scratched the surface of doom more I'd find plenty of bands with similar sounds, but it's quite hard to pinpoint an exact sound for Plateau Sigma. Just me saying how it blends deep growls with emotional cleans probably won't do much, since there's an ocean of great bands who do the same thing, like Clouds or Hamferð, to which admittedly Plateau Sigma has a lot of similarities to. If I say that they blend funeral doom with death doom you might think that they sound like Evoken or Ataraxie, but Plateau Sigma, if they were to be called death doom, they would be more in the doom-with-death-vocals than the murky-doomy-death-metal-riffs type, so basically the death metal part is quite non existent, not much even in the harsh vocals which feel more funeral doom inspired.

Despite the limitations in wording Symbols - The Sleeping Harmony Of The World Below feels like it covers a great range of sounds and emotions within the doom field, despite there being plenty of sides of doom metal like sludge or stoner or drone or epic that aren't touched by it, but nonetheless it still feels like within the limited range that it has, it keeps finding new places to explore and new sounds to conceive, whether the slower and harsher funeral doom sounds, which are far from the bleakest and harshest that funeral doom can sound, or the equally slow but rather dark and atmospheric, almost gothic at times. It's like these Italians put late 90s Anathema, Thergothon but with a far less raw production, and some early Swallow The Sun too in a blender and the end result is as masterfully homogeneously executed.

So what to make of it, a very light funeral doom album? An atmospheric doom album that sometimes has growls? Just a mix of already existent sounds? Yes and no. The sound palette that Plateau Sigma have on this album wouldn't have been enough had they not approached it with such great skill in songwriting, managing to always create engaging grooves and slightly progressive structures, and such great vocal performance, one that doesn't feel like an exceptional voice, but one that is clearly put to good use in this context. The production is probably the thing dragging this album down most of all, feeling like a lot of things would have a bit more impact with a better suited one. It's in the weird position not being pristine enough to be strong, not being raw enough to feel esoteric.

I remember liking Rituals when I first heard it but it clearly didn't have the same impact that this one did. They finally crafted a cohesive sound for themselves.