Review by Fernando on October 12, 2025.

Hailing from Portugal, Pestifer is a death metal band that, despite being founded at the turn of the century (according to Metal Archives) have only released 2 LP’s as of 2025 and a demo in 2009, this isn’t a dig at them since anyone into metal knows how much of a pain in the ass booking studio time can be, regardless, despite having such a small back catalogue with many years in between releases, the band has still managed to get some buzz going for themselves, and in 2025 they’ve unleashed their sophomore record Ravaging Fury.

The band is, of course, death metal, and despite their long stretches of time without music, they took full advantage of the revival trend; however, unlike the copyists and worship bands, Pestifer firmly took their own path. The band’s style of death metal can best be described as relentless. The album starts at 11 and never lets out except for a break in the middle in the form of an instrumental track, 'Christless Dawn' which is a plodding and downright ritualistic piece that does an excellent job as a break in between all the savagery without losing the momentum or intensity whatsoever. Furthermore, the band flexes at all times, despite speed being the driving force, the band still manages to feature virtuoso soloing and drumming while having some excellent riffs to back up such a sheer display of technical prowess.

The vocals are also especially vicious, they’re these rabid growls that also never let up for a second, as a whole the band works as an excellent well oiled machine of utter destruction, but it's not just a display of speed, the band also have a good sense of dynamics, and their songwriting is a perfect example of packing a whole lot in a brief yet substantial time. 11 tracks and all between 2 and 4 minutes and not a single second wasted, everything is paced in such a way that the songs never feel overlong or anemic, and the band use that time well, at some points the music reaches near black metal and grindcore levels of pure intensity while still remaining as pure and unmistakably death metal, with an evil atmosphere that’s persistent to the very end with the an outro track where the band really bring it home with a discordant piece of noise and sampled praying bookending the blasphemous bloodshed with an ominous conclusion.

The production is also excellent, the band perfectly use a clean and crisp production so that all the band members are audible, and the drumming especially sounds very powerful and natural, which is the best testament to the record as a whole, how organic everything sounds, there’s no artifice or triggering to be found, it’s the band playing it straight and recorded dry, as it should be. My one and only complaint is that because the music is so relentless, it can get a bit tiring, not that the music is bad, far from it, but this is indeed a record designed to test your endurance, and repeated listens for this review did make me feel a bit strained from the brutality of it all, but make no mistake, this is one of the better displays of death metal in what for a very long time has felt like a landfill of repetition and worship, so for that alone Pestifer gets a strong recommendation from me.

Rating: 8 out of 10