Somewhere within a nebula, seventeen million lightyears away from earth, a wormhole spits out a contorted mess. Disfigured and rearranged by the unknown forces of interstellar space, a new Astriferous record has emerged from within this crushing inhospitable cosmic realm. Exactly three Earth years have elapsed since last this voracious extraterrestrial monster released their debut full-length transmission. The initial offering saw their vessel emerge as an impressive player within the human old school Death Metal bastion. Merging spacetime horrors with fairly technical performances, the band, hailing from the Earthly land mass of Costa Rica, were not necessarily reinventing the stylistic launch pad, so much as arising as a formidable soldier within the traditional genre’s ranks. Full-length number two here, which is entitled ‘Atavistic Unraveling’, doubles down on the band’s warped and ugly galactic meditations for another quasar-inducing batch of OSDM terror.
Immediately evident is the band’s penchant for pummeling, murky guitar compositions, and, in particular, their cavernous dual vocal bellows. I liken their reverb-heavy oration to the light-devouring power of a black hole’s event horizon. A track such as ‘The Floating Catacombs’, feels so instrumentally massive and far-reaching that, if played at a sufficient volume, may strike fear into the antennae of distant martians. The Incantation influence is evident, and I enjoy how the band manipulates this source of inspiration when summoning their own breed of abstract astral horror. I love how the track ‘Dissolution of Eternity’ continues this all matter-devouring rampage before slowing to a crawl around its midsection and then marching onwards with a desperate and insatiable sense of cruelty.
‘Arcane Demonomania’, ramps up the tempo with its powerful opening drum segment and tension-inducing guitar riff switch-ups. The bass drums on this track add an extraordinary amount of lower frequency force, almost like a comet obliterating anything that crosses its blazing path. The universe devouring eight minute track ‘Resonance Cascade’ closes out the record. Beginning with a slower trudge through doomy powerchords, the percussion gradually rallies the band back towards their wall of galactic matter-devouring sound. As the song progresses towards its latter moments, the band alternates between doomier sections and some of the most enormous, loud, and terrorising ideas on the whole record. It is a satisfying extraterrestrial behemoth to close out such a colossal tracklist.
Atavistic Unraveling improves on the riff-craft of the previous Astriferous record and simultaneously elevates the production quality into a new dimensional plane. Whilst the band aren’t necessarily attempting to reinvent the core ideals of this genre, they’re simply an outfit that has a clear identity and a particular sound that they do with an obvious, unrelenting confidence. This is a very good Death Metal record, with exciting compositions that are often eyebrow-raisingly brutal. I see this appealing to fans of classic groups such as Immolation and Incantation, but also to fans of more recent entities such as Mutagenic Host and Replicant.
