Astriferous interview

Hi there! Your debut Pulsations From the Black Orb already established a very distinct sonic world. With Atavistic Unraveling, did you consciously try to expand that world, or simply push deeper into it?

A bit of both. We feel Pulsations helped create a foundation for the sound and it also helped us notice what we wanted to keep doing and what not. So, you could say Atavistic Unraveling pushes forward a lot of ideas that came to be during the Pulsations era but we've also managed to add more vocabulary to complement and expand and to give this new album its own identity.

The title Atavistic Unraveling suggests regression, degeneration - almost a return to something buried beneath consciousness. What does “atavism” mean to Astriferous beyond its literal definition?

You said it best. The idea behind the title references a return to something buried beneath consciousness, tapping into primordial instincts and re-establishing that connection to long forgotten wisdom drowned out by all the noise from the modern world.

The promo emphasizes early Finnish death metal, but that’s become almost a genre unto itself now - countless bands chasing that crooked, alien feeling. What do you think most of them misunderstand?

From my perspective, I'd say some bands tend to lose the aggression or the ferocity in the music while experimenting with things like dissonance and atmosphere, which is an essential part of death metal you just can't put aside and where the magic of the classic Finnish bands is. It feels very alien and otherworldly but it's still angry, vicious music.

We also didn't aim to form a band to replicate the Finnish sound specifically, I feel there's as much influence from Morbid Angel and Immolation in this album, so I wouldn't want to speak from a position in which I would claim to understand something others don't, everyone is doing their own thing...but stuff that goes overboard with the weirdness and loses the punch is usually something that makes me lose interest personally.

There’s also the South American angle, which interests me more. Finnish death metal often feels internal, almost psychological; South American death metal historically feels external, violent, eruptive. How do those instincts coexist in Astriferous?

This adds perfectly to the previous question. That intensity almost inherent to Latin American metal is what I consider balances out the most unconventional, weirder elements and keeps the music grounded and well established within extreme metal sonically. This is basically what keeps the momentum going and sets the dynamics.

This album is described as tighter, sharper, and more focused - but doesn’t that risk reducing some of the primal unease that made the debut so effective?

We actually feel it was beneficial to our sound. One of our main goals was for the music to be sharp and legible without compromising force and weight or becoming too clean. We worked hard to find that sweet spot in which the tone of the instruments and the production were more detailed and precise without losing punch and we're very satisfied with how things turned out.

The phrase “right side of art rather than riff salad” in the promo caught my attention. That’s an unusually defensive statement. Were you consciously aware of how easily this style can collapse into formlessness?

I believe it has more to do with what we've been discussing so far, that balance between what we consider more traditional heavy music and the stuff that's more out of the box. We're not overstepping too much into experimental or avant garde territory so we're not concerned about becoming too abstract. The line you can draw between Atavistic Unraveling and our previous releases is what keeps us on the safe side I would say.

A lot of dissonant death metal bands today confuse confusion with depth. How do you know when a riff is truly unsettling rather than merely awkward?

It needs to have that sense of musicality. I don't even think it needs to be 100% theoretically correct, but it needs that strong sense of rhythm and harmony even if they're unorthodox to be able to convey something rather than being just strange sounds glued together.

Your songwriting often feels like it’s mutating mid-motion, but there’s still propulsion underneath. Is that structure carefully designed, or does it emerge naturally from chaos?

We don't really predispose ourselves when writing songs so whatever elements have become part of our sound have spawned organically. We like dynamics and changes of pace, when transitioning from one section of the song to the next, we actively think about what will keep the momentum going and avoid getting stale or unfocused.

Costa Rica has become one of the most interesting extreme metal territories in recent years. Why do you think that scene has developed such a distinct identity?

There's a lot of talent and quality bands and luckily, there's a lot of resources to put your musical offering out there and be part of the global underground in this time and age. There has also been a shift in mentality and now the focus is more on recording, collaborating with labels and touring opportunities. The understanding that there's a community out there you can be a part of and the good reception worldwide has become very motivating and has resulted in a lot of international collaborations.There's hard working bands putting out good music and working with like-minded people around the world. It goes from there.

The production is slightly cleaner this time. In death metal, “cleaner” can be dangerous - it can expose too much. What did clarity reveal on this record that murk would have hidden?

It makes the compositions stand out. We've always considered texture and atmosphere very important to our sound but this time we really wanted to make a musical statement and the style of production we aimed for was meant to emphasize this. Still, we tried to carefully calibrate to the point where we weren't compromising any of the grittiness and muscle by overpolishing.

At the same time, early Finnish death metal was rarely about precision in the modern sense. Did tightening the execution ever feel like betraying the spirit of the influence?

Not really, we're not trying to be a Finnish death metal worship band. Albums like Brutality's Screams of Anguish and Monstrosity's Millennium were just as big of an inspiration for these songs as Nespithe and Slumber of Sullen Eyes. Those albums and bands like Disincarnate and Gorguts had more to do with some of the musical direction this time around.

What’s one obscure Finnish demo or EP that had more impact on Astriferous than the usual sacred names?

Even though Adramelech is one of the most well known bands, people mostly listen to Psychostasia and stop there. They have an EP called Seven which I love, amazing riffing. Highly recommended.

The word “atavistic” implies inherited memory - ancient impulses surviving in modern flesh. Do you see your music as excavating something primal, or creating something entirely new from old remains?

The concept deals more with excavating something primal that will be the catalyst for the next evolutionary step in human consciousness. Digging within the mind to channel arcane forces.

Your music sounds ancient, but the compositional choices often feel almost progressive in how fractured they are. Do you see Astriferous as traditional death metal, or something mutating away from it?

I wouldn't say it's anything new, we're not trying to change the genre or reinvent the wheel. At this point, we see death metal as some sort of discipline you can learn to practice and apply your own personal take to. We're just students of the game basically and this is our version of it, not really interested in redefining it or going too far outside the boundaries.

You have bands like Immolation, for example, that have a very dissonant, angular sound but have never been labeled anything outside of straight up death metal regardless of how unconventional their sound has always been. I think it's the same with what we do: it's weird and warpy but still death metal at the end of the day.

A lot of death metal today feels either too polished or too reverential. Do you think the genre is currently too concerned with preserving itself?

There's a lot of regurgitation of ideas I believe. There's nothing wrong with having clear, well defined influences but some of the modern stuff just feels undigested or unprocessed and just a direct mimic of something else. You don't have to revolutionize the whole paradigm but rather find interesting ways to combine established elements of the genre and define your own style. It's not easy of course, there's a lot of saturation now that we're four decades into the history of death metal and we're no strangers to getting accused of being too reverential from time to time either, it might be a bit subjective.

When you deliberately write strange, angular material, where do you draw the line between challenging the listener and alienating them completely?

We aim for our music to be immersive so we really have no intention of becoming too complicated or hard to digest to the point of alienating the listener. Writing stuff that has a strong traditional foundation and bending it without completely changing its shape is what I feel gives the music that sense of unease or paranormality, it's familiar but you know something has mutated. For us, it has to feel like music from a different dimension but something you instinctively recognize as music nonetheless.

The Costa Rican scene has been gaining serious international attention lately. Has that created pressure, or does Astriferous still feel like it operates in total isolation?

It's exciting, the bar keeps getting raised here and now the world is taking notice and turning its eyes towards these latitudes. We want to keep it consistent to further develop the local scene and its infrastructure and realize its full potential. A few years ago, interviews and reviews always included something along the lines of "Costa Rica is not a place known for extreme metal" or "this is the only band from Costa Rica I know" to now being discussed as a proper regional scene and that is very motivating.

When Atavistic Unraveling ends, should the listener feel like they’ve understood something - or like they’ve lost something?

We hope it feels like the end of a journey in search for ancestral knowledge only to be decimated by its sheer dimension when contemplated.

https://astriferous.bandcamp.com/music

https://www.instagram.com/astriferousdeath