Rituals

This review was originally posted on the Deaf Sparrow Facebook page on 26 July 2016. Written by Stanley Stepanic

I like new things. I like when people try new things. New things are good, because they can open pathways for people to do better things with those new things, if someone who first tries doesn't exactly succeed. Plateau Sigma are trying new things, they only need make sure it is not for newness alone, especially through simply genre jumping without thinking about it first.

Coming from Italy and carried by the much respected Avantgarde Music, who is clearly about the new, one can already assume something new is to be found herein. You'd be largely right. Plateau Sigma, which is clever way to talk about drugs in doom without revealing the fact, take a number of interesting angles with "Rituals," but fail to really draw these components into a cohesive mantra through which one may enter doom nirvana, or something.

One of the things I enjoyed about "Rituals" was its solemness. Moments such as the opening of "Cvltrvm" are harrowing, and with the clean-vocal approach all the more bleak, which gives Plateau Sigma a partial funeral edge, clearly heard in the riffing. Funeral is rarely played with this much consistency and aptness, to be honest. Their chording is wonderful and being that I've never been on a drug trip, I feel like I have listening to this, so now I'm cool. Where "Rituals" fails, however, is the band's odd step into death metal in the most unambiguous way possible, switching mid-song sometimes. It's these moments where this album remains unimpressive. Still, with the amount of skill they have otherwise, Plateau Sigma should prove a powerful force in Italian doom if they play it right. And head bows to the very interesting cover by Francesco Gemelli, who seems to have overlayed the design on unfinished marble or coral stone for that Ancient Greece Dark Ages effect.