Review: Astriferous ‘Atavistic Unraveling’
One of the greatest thrills of being a music lover and collector is discovering a band from a far-flung corner of the world and realising they absolutely rip.
Today, I get to plant another pin on the death metal map with Costa Rica’s Astriferous. Their cosmos-twisting death metal assault returns on Atavistic Unraveling, the band’s sophomore album that was released via Me Saco Un Ojo and Pulverised Records.
Astriferous first popped up for me with their 2023 record, Pulsations From The Black Orb, an impressive debut that unleashed a solid combination of old-school death metal atmosphere and modern technical precision. It’s been three years and with the band’s return, can they top that debut and take their sound further into a potentially end-of-year list-worthy album?
One of the things that makes Atavistic Unraveling so compelling is that it avoids the obvious catharsis. It feels more like a gradual descent into the void than a series of climactic moments. Riffs surface from the murk, twist into stranger shapes, and disappear before they’ve fully taken form. The guitars weave around each other in tense, unpredictable ways, combining the weight of your favourite old-school death metal with a constant sense of motion that really grabs you and takes you along for the journey. There’s very little that feels settled. Even at its slowest, the music seems to be inching toward something darker.
combining the weight of your favourite old-school death metal…
Aside from the actual performance, the album highlight is the production, which, rather than smothering the music in murk for the sake of atmosphere, gives the songs room to breathe. The mix is heavy and suffocating when it needs to be, but it also allows the details to cut through as the guitars, drums, and bass remain distinct enough to reveal the intricacies of the arrangements. As a result, repeated listens continue to uncover small melodic touches and unexpected rhythmic shifts that might have gone unnoticed the first time around.
Returning to the performance, I can’t single out any member as they all excel at conveying the horrific, cosmic, otherworldly presence that consumes all life and the human existentialism it undeniably brings. The thing with this record is it follows a well-received debut. So, does Atavistic Unraveling change the narrative, or twist up the four-piece’s sound? Well, no, but that’s cool. What it does do is refine that already settled and well-thought-out sound into a solid record that is definitely their strongest output yet.
If that sounds like your thing, go grab a copy, give it a spin, and let me know what you think. Cheers to you and to Astriferous!
Band Links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Matt Alexander
