October 2023 - Feature Release - The Fallen Edition

So just like that we find that a new month is upon us which of course means that we’ll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we’re asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. We’re really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on our chosen releases so don’t be shy.

This month’s feature release for The Fallen has been nominated by myself, Sonny. It is the debut album from underrated Italian death doom crew Plateau Sigma. As is often the case with Italian doom metal, there is a bit more going on with PS than simple death doom, so I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do, but even if not I look forward to reading your thoughts.

For some bizarre reason it is listed on Spotify as a single, but I can assure you, with it's five tracks running to 48 minutes-plus, it is most definitely a full-length album.

https://metal.academy/releases/14609

Here's my review:

You know what’s amazing about the Metal Academy feature release arrangement? Every now & then one of our well-educated members will nominate a release that’s received absolutely no fanfare whatsoever from a band that I’ve never even heard of & it’ll blow my socks off. Sonny’s got a pretty reasonable record in this department too with a recent example being his Dvvell nomination that went on to become our The Fallen Release of 2022 & it would seem that he’s done it again with Plateau Sigma’s “White Walls of Nightmares” album which is a sublime experience that’s deserving of so much more attention than it’s received in the more than a decade since its release.

I’ve seen mention of “White Wings of Nightmares” being released as a single or an E.P. which is kinda silly given its 49-minute duration & album-style format. The reality is that the band regards it as a bit of an experiment & prefers that it’s thought of as a demo which is the reason for the strangely inappropriate format labelling. It contains just the five songs with each being given plenty of time & space to develop. The production job isn’t top tier with the guitars sounding slightly fuzzy but the flaws are minor & shouldn’t make an impact on your listening experience.

I’d describe Plateau Sigma’s sound as being very much a tribute to the great doom/death releases of the early-to-mid 1990’s. You can expect chuggy, mid-paced death metal-inspired riffs & deep death growls mixed in with slower power-chord driven sections layered with gothic clean guitar melodies. There are a number of atmospheric clean sections featuring beautifully executed clean vocals spread across the tracklisting too & I actually found these to be the most effective parts of the album to be honest. Plateau Sigma certainly know what they’re doing in that department with some of these sections reminding me very much of artists Tiamat, Opeth & particularly Anathema with some of the vocals being the spitting image of Vincent Cavanagh (who I absolutely adore just quietly). The chuggy mid-paced stuff is very simple in a My Dying Bride kinda way & is perhaps a touch less engaging than the doomier material but the band mix things up nicely so you’re unlikely to reach for the skip button at any point.

The tracklisting is very consistent with all five songs deserving of your attention. The shortest inclusion “Lunar Stream Hypnosis” is perhaps the least essential of the five but after the first three tracks I was feeling pretty confident that I’d be awarding this release a solid four-star rating. That’s when things get really interesting though because the remaining two tracks are absolutely stunning & are also the longest in duration which saw them having a massive impact on my impressions of the release overall, particularly the epic, slow-building closer “Maira & the Archangel” which is as good as this style of metal gets.

How a release like this one manages to slip through the cracks in the internet age is pretty baffling to be honest. It’s certainly left me wondering what else Plateau Sigma have to offer with their three subsequent (& equally overlooked) full-length albums. If you’re a fan of bands like Anathema, My Dying Bride & Ahab then you owe it to yourself to check this one out guys.

4.5/5