Symptom: Caverns of Katabasis (2014)
If an extreme metal band's (black metal or otherwise) TRVE CVLT status is measured by how mysterious and obscure they manage to be, then Portland, Oregon's Symptom passed that credibility test with honors (they even had the requisite illegible logo) ... until it nullified their career prospects, anyway.
Formed in 2010 by one man wrecking crew J.T. Gilmore (vocals, guitar, bass, drums), Sympton self-released a pair of EPs in 2011 before signing with Mexico's Cráneo Negro Records and reissuing the tandem as '12's Beneath the Ossuary collection.
Next on the agenda, Symptom's first long-player, Opulent Atrocity (what a great title!), arrived in 2013 and today's subject, Caverns of Katabasis (an ancient Greek term for a voyage into the Underworld), followed a full decade ago, in '14.
Yet this copy must have sat, unwanted and forlorn, on a record store shelf ever since, because a few months ago it was tossed into a Discogs order I had placed -- free of charge -- by a retailer who, I can only surmise, made a business decision to free shelf space for more lucrative vinyl.
But the thing is: Symptom ain't half-bad; in fact, they're at least half-good, which is another way of saying they're competent without achieving anything truly original or transcendent with their familiar-sounding mix of death, doom, and other metallic forms.
"Risen from Shadow" is the token, atmospheric, instrumental intro, after which surprisingly frequent blast-beats often push "Marrow Spires" and "Omen of Crypts" into the black metal realm, before returning to their primary domain in slothful quasi-funeral doom dirges.
At their best, ensuing numbers like "Saturine" and "L'appel du Vide" (which translates to "Call of the Void" -- neat-o!) contrast the sort of detuned, leviathan riffs I can never get enough of with woeful guitar melodies or a lonesome, despairing piano ... lovely stuff.
But don't ask me about the unintelligibly howled lyrics ... I just can't be arsed to absorb their no doubt cryptic accounts of arcane lore.
And while I did look up the meaning of "Pnakotic" (Lovecraft, naturally), the song may as well -- indeed, would be better off, if you ask me -- recounting the exploits of Cthulhu (what it did on its summer vacation, etc.) as sharing a delicious panna cotta recipe.
All jesting aside, though, I've heard much worse albums of this ilk over the years from far more successful bands than Symptom, so I'll probably hang onto it for some time, in spite of the project's lacking personality or backstory.
About which, as I posited in my opening statement, maybe Symptom mastermind Gilmore was a little TOO successful at being UN-successful, but that hasn't stopped him from contributing his talents to other bands like Eosphoros, Ghoulgotha, and Void Manifest in recent years.
More Funeral Doom (or Close Enough): Ahab’s The Giant, Colosseum’s Chapter 1: Delirium, Confessor’s Condemned, dISEMBOWELMENT’s Transcendence into the Peripheral, Evoken’s Antithesis of Light, Mammoth Storm’s Fornjot, Morgion’s Among Majestic Ruin, Rippikoulu’s Musta Seremonia, Samothrace’s Life’s Trade, Serpentine Path’s Serpentine Path, Shape of Despair’s Angels of Distress, Skepticism’s Stormcrowfleet, Solothus’ Realm of Ash and Blood, Spectral Voice’s Eroded Corridors of Unbeing, Swallow the Sun’s Songs from the North I, II & III, Thergothon’s Stream from the Heavens, Thorr's Hammer's Dommedagsnatt EP, Triptykon’s Eparistera Daimones, Winter’s Into Darkness.
