Artist: Atavistic Passage
Country: United Kingdom
Label: Manifest Of Hate Creations
Formats: Demo Tape
Year: 2025
About a year ago the first demo of Atavistic Passage appeared and captivated me with its raw and hypnotic power. I absolutely loved the harsh production and repetitive patterns that swept me away to the same mystical Black Metal realms of bands like Black Cilice and Candelabrum, or even classic Xasthur. And although Atavistic Passage (the person behind the project goes by the same name) released another debut demo with his other project, Hibernal Abyss, I am always quite happy to see musicians not going head over heels into speed-releasing. ‘Demonstration Two’ is obviously this project’s second effort and fifteen minutes of new music.
After an intro the music bursts into something that is quite obvious lost a significant part of that previous grainy sound. ‘Demonstration Two’ is still a rather raw affair, but it is way more cleaned up compared to the first demo tape, as a result losing a bit of that Black Cilice resemblance. While there’s still quite a bit of older Striborg, Xasthur and Candelabrum in the mix, this second demo has a bit more to offer in terms of what could be considered an “own musical identity”. Obviously, nothing that Atavistic Passage has to offer is in any sense original, but obviously none of that was ever the intention.
Yet, the thing that made ‘Demonstration One’ stand out was not only the crude productional values, but also the rather surprising Heavy Metal sort of song writing. And fortunately, that part has not been erased from the project’s DNA. Especially a bit further one in the demo there’s a few very obvious Heavy Metal riffs that opens up the music to add some extra dynamics. In addition, the humming Dungeon Synth keyboards in the background strengthens this demo’s atmospheric character, which plays a slightly more prominent role or at least shines a bit more through now the production is somewhat cleaned up.
Atavistic Passage clearly shows that it is project that is still very much a developing entity, probably looking for a definitive sound, but at least taking steps in terms of song writing and recording quality.
