ATAVICUS is a Pagan Metal band that comes from Italy and sing in Italian, which is something cool and different in my opinion. At first I was a little bit anxious about how Italian would fit metal and that's just perfect. The band have released their newest album "Di Eroica Stirpe" recently and that's what we are going to talk about.

The opening song from the album is "Come Nasce Un Eroe" and it starts out with a cool kind of Black Metal mixed up with Melodic Death Metal guitar riff, followed by blast-beats. The orchestrations are really good and the instrumental as well, but I must say that the vocals gave me a little bit of boring as it reminded me of BURZUM. There's a nice part where they used acoustic nylon string guitars, which gave the song a whole different vibe. I liked.

"L'Estasi Del Sangue" starts out with a paganism Metal kind of riff that will definitely make you feel inspired to go fight in a battle and defend your homeland. The orchestrations are beautiful and the aggressiveness of the guitars, bass and drums plus the vocals, fits it in a perfectly way. There's also some clean vocals and it gave the song a whole new dynamic. "L'Ardire Del Avi" starts out with a cool groovy guitar riff that is followed by a blast-beat session, but then it's back to something groovier and until now, it's their most diverse song. There's a high and low growling vocals on this one and it sounded really cool. "Divina Lama Invitta" has this Black Metal riff that definitely was inspired on ABBATH and IMMORTAL. There's a lot of variety on this song and the changes are really well done.

"Canto Di Dolore Dell'Antica Dea Madre" starts out with what seems to be a mother crying and it soon gives place to an acoustic guitar sound. There's a desperate feeling on this song and also some beautiful female vocals. That's a cool song where they used a lot of different elements, showing they can do whatever the hell they want. "Consacrato All'Eterno" starts out with a cool percussion that reminded me of the SEPULTURA and ANGRA drumming kind of sound. There's a cool guitar leading the melodies while the drums sets place for the war that's about to come. "Safinim" has ten point forty-one-minute length and by far its the most Epic song on the album. It starts out with a cool acoustic guitar sound that changes its dynamic, until the aggressive instruments hits in. It's a cool song.

"Eroica Di Stirpe" is the title track and the song that closes the album. It starts out in a very Epic way with a beautiful piano, some good guitars and orchestrations going on. There's a lot of clean vocals here and I think that they should explore more of that.

ATAVICUS has written and released a good album. The songs were well written, the production was okay and the instruments were really well executed. I just think that the band should explore more the different vocals and maybe try something different. But they are really great.