[Cover art by Alberto Salinas Molina]
I’m almost certain whichever genius told us to never judge a book by its cover never opened the promo package to Astriferous’ Atavistic Unraveling to get a load of this.
Legion. For the Security. Dawn of Possession. Formulas Fatal to the Flesh.
Anyone worth talking to about this kinda thing can absolutely draw some accurate conclusions from that. Let’s run through them.
Those albums rule. Atavistic Unraveling probably rules.
Yes! It’s not a canonically great death metal album, but this is an extremely satisfying and calorically dense 37-minutes of death metal. It might just end up being one of my favorites of the whole year.
But … it’s probably some tribute/worship act.
Ah yes, “meat and potatoes” death metal. A beachhead against the nowadays perversion of my beloved genre.
Yes! BUT ALSO NO!
Haha! The “Don’t judge a book by its cover” guy was right! Steeped though it may be in OSDM’s warm waters, Atavistic Unravelling is, deep down, a freaky little record. Tee-shirts and press packets be damned, the only band I really want to talk about in relation to Astriferous is Canadian quirkmeisters Voivod.
You’ll hear it first in the closing minute of album opener “Carriers of the Curse,” where after serving up the skirt steak and fingerlings Astriferous hit you with the BAM! What is that riff that drags itself out of the shit n’ mud Gale Snoats style at 4:07? This riff bespeaks a crew of dudes who enjoyed a season in the shade beneath Dimension Hatröss’ learning tree. Sneaky, spiraling stuff that gets its claws around your ankle and says “heyyy c’meeeere.” Even better, this outro seamlessly bleeds into four massive snare hits that initiate the following track, “The Floating Catacombs.” And that right there just about sums it up. If Atavistic Unraveling were a battle jacket, all the bands featured in the press photo above have patches in places of honor, but they’d live in harmony with this as the centerpiece.
Listen to those lurching, dissonant chords at 1:17 of “Dissolution of Eternity” or the jittery flat-fiths that stutter throughout “Proto-Embryo (The Third Tribulation).” Only the players can tell you which artists directly influenced the idiosyncratic riffing style that predominates throughout Atavistic (and maybe they’d draw a more direct line to death metal acts like Immolation and Demilich). All I can tell you is what I hear. I hear a deep and abiding love of Voivod couched within a decidedly unadulterated approach to death metal. And that makes me very, very happy.
I knew the tee-shirts wouldn’t steer me wrong. Atavistic Unraveling rules.
Yes! It’s death metal that comes to you via the genre’s very handy filtering mechanism, which selects almost exclusively for musicians who really like death metal. So, Astriferous’ compositions do not betray an interest in turning death metal into something different. What I do hear, though, is a band that loves death metal. And one that pairs the requisite talent with a robust understanding of heavy metal’s history to contribute something worthwhile to the genre. It’s death metal well done, with a little something extra. Dig in.
