Atavistic Decay – Immakulate Invokations [EP]

On Atavistic Decay’s follow up their demo from 2024 we have a chunky downtuned Death/Doom side vs. an “ominous abyss sounds from hell” side. Forlorn guitar leads add to the spiralling descent on the first song until the music drops away revealing a lone guitar passage that languishes in mysterious tones while vocals hiss and bid the listener further into the void. Obeying, you are crushed under the wheel of a very slow and pulverizingly heavy Doom ending section which makes me imagine getting lost in the catacombs under Paris or Lima.

The vibe is decidedly more sinister this time around and the overall project feels more unhinged and experimental in nature despite the first/title track’s working within the context of the band’s established Death/Doom sound, leaning into what sounds to me like a bit more of a Swedish influence this time around, in the vein of something like Carnage. The brutal vocals sound like they were recorded from the depths of a cave with the sound emanating from the other side of a water filled tunnel. This is some categorically “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here” type music and it’s like watching the last dying rays of the sunlight dip out of reach while the darkness takes hold of you.

Following this opening, we now have the very different yet very capable ‘Transcend the Flesh’. A layer of humming dark synthesizer cuts a path through the void between songs and helps the first song bleed into the second. Very atmospheric, creepy as fuck and eventually filled with the whirring of mechanical textures like being worked on by some kind of strange alien creature inside of a ship or in a far away dimension you’ve somehow slipped through into. The song is like you’ve entered a massive underground space with a massive entity but it’s pitch black and the entity is whispering spells in its dark lair while you try to escape with your life.

Consisting of two songs around 7-8m long for a total runtime of 15m as opposed to the demo’s 27m, ‘Immakulate Invokations’ is bite sized but with substance and I certainly didn’t feel like the second song ‘Transcend the Flesh’ was a throw away or outro but rather a genuine central pillar standing alongside the title track in terms of what they were trying to achieve here atmospherically and intentionally.

The menacing synthesizer hellscapes with creepy vocal work that makes for an auditory descent into hell combined with the the shorter length of this release comparatively makes this feel very different from the demo and I’m stoked to see where things go from here for these guys.