Written: 6th March 2024
Formed in Lazio, Italy in 2007, Hideous Divinity, whose name alone conjures a fascination with both the grotesque and the divine, have produced some of the most remorseless death metal released over the last fifteen years. During more recent years, such as on 2019’s Simulacrum, they showed that while maintaining their brutality, they were keen to increase the depth and subtle nuances within their sound. With Unextinct, they look to build on the foundations of Simulacrum, while creating a new milestone in the band’s discography.
Instrumental Dust Settles On Humanity opens the album with a chilling apprehension, unsettling ever-changing dark guitar melodies and slow steady doom laden chords. Intensity increases until rapid-fire double kick drums are unleashed, forewarning of the incoming storm, which arrives in the form of The Numinous One. Immediately, we are thrown into a maelstrom of vicious complex and blistering guitar riffs. Nevertheless, this is not brutality for brutality’s sake; the album is full of intricate compositions with a high level of technical proficiency and thematically rich content. The Numinous One dwells on the idea of a profound spiritual presence that is both awe-inspiring and terrifying. Here is the divine horror / Numinous life of the dead / The scent of putrid breath / Indifferent, eucharist elicits the power, the horror / Life is formed then deformed. At over seven minutes long, it is only the third longest song on the album. However, Hideous Divinity are becoming increasingly adept at allowing for moments of change in dynamics, tempo or intensity, meaning that tracks do not become totally overwhelming. Commenting on the song, the band, with reference to vampires - and in particular the film, Nosferatu directed by Werner Herzog - say, “The Numinous One is the perfect paradigm of our new album. Everything you will find on Unextinct is there. Visually, a relentless descent into a new dimension of horror where, in a world that just survived a shipwreck, we evoke and reawaken an entity that escapes our control and bites us back. Like Lucy, we freeze in awe and horror and succumb to this impersonal, uncontrollable predator that brings extinction. Like the rat soldiers, we kneel in front of the abyss of pestilence, unable to look away.”
Against The Sovereignty of Mankind begins with a fast technical thrash like riff before erupting with colossal chords and vocalist Enrico Di Lorenzo’s visceral force complementing the instrumental ferocity. A poisoned dream of dark and broken souls / A poisoned dream of hearts where salt will feast / Again / Another tale of barbed wire and blood / Just one more tale to keep my eyes awake / A life unworthy of the name undeserves to be saved. Rebellion is central to the song’s overall tone, alongside the message of profound dissatisfaction with the current state of human governance or control. There is variation amongst the aggression, including moments when the drums or the guitars drop out and Di Lorenzo is isolated in his anguished utterances. Towards the end of the track, his voice reaches the deepest abyss of his range. War / Against them all / Against it all / Against the sovereignty of man! / Rejected, unchosen ones. It is a devastatingly compelling section of the song.
Like a thousand putrescent insects creeping across the strings, a menacing and unsettling introduction draws us towards the malevolent forces that dwell within Atto Quarto: The Horror Paradox. Di Lorezno bellows in defiance as the main riff takes hold. I am! / Self-consciousness dies as something else will rise and bite / The spiral grotesque carved in pain and despair / A geometric perversion mind will not understand. The longest track on the album plunges us deeper into the terror that arises when confronting the vast, unknowable aspects of the universe, the fragility of human identity and the limitations imposed on our understanding an existence. Freedom and will, structure, limits, blinded / Beatific light escapes this dead geometry / According to the will deranged of something else / What was your world, now is mine, as before so after. After a frenzied but technically magnificent guitar solo by Enrico Schettino, Atto Quarto: The Horror Paradox features the first appearance of anything approaching a more reflective moment, albeit still with an overriding tension of anxiety. Betrayed at the altar / By my will to live / I failed you! / In shame, I cry.
Even by the standards of the Exocet missile velocities that appear on Unextinct, parts of Quasi-Sentient are amongst the fastest sections on the album; Di Lorenzo’s vocal delivery ranging from an abyssal growling rumble, to a machine-gunning wail of which Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation would approve. Yet within the last minute of the same song, as a tortured Di Lorenzo repeatedly screams The world, not for us, Hideous Divinity allow the drums and bass to fade away and leave a sole accompanying melodically distorted guitar. A short linking track, Hair Dirt Mud, surprisingly opens with glorious but vampirish synth, which leads towards some gargantuan, stomping riffs and drums. It is hardly a lengthy palette cleanser, given that in the latter of its two minutes the entire band descend with unforgiving avalanching cruelty, but it illustrates the band’s increased focus on the use of space within an album this vitriolic.
Within the lyrics of the album, several song titles are followed by a literary quote. In the case of More Than Many, Never One, it comes from Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms: A thousand lieutenants before the month is out / A thousand, thousand by the start of the last winter / None of them trapped by a name. It encapsulates the theme of an individual’s struggle for identity and meaning within the overwhelming forces of the world, particularly in the context of war. More Than Many, Never One uses the first minute to bombard the listener with slower, sludge-like riffs, before a momentary hiatus during which we hear a portentous whisper: Legion. The battle with both internal and external forces has truly begun and the track spews forth raging volcanic emotion, merciless guitar and ferocious bass. Hideous Divinity have been keen to point out how happy they are with the sound of the record and they have every reason to be pleased. “Every song has become a world with its own dissonances and rules made to be broken. A soundtrack of a shipwreck with the best sound production we've ever had: our brother Stefano 'Saul' Morabito at 16th Cellar Studios really outdid himself.” For such a consistent severe album, for the vast majority of the time, the vocals sit well in the mix and Stefano Franceschini’s bass is clearly audible alongside the barrage of immense percussion.
The ghostly minute long instrumental Der Velorene Sohn (The Lost Son in English) brings us to penultimate track, Mysterium Tremendum (A Terrible Mystery) and further evidence of Di Lorenzo’s unnatural ability for almost continual guttural power, especially admirably considering the lyrical complexity of the album. With each song on the album exploring the presence and effect of the previously mentioned numinous one, they act as minute dissections of humanity’s fleeting remaining time, following the shipwreck of our own making. Who has sewn my mouth? / Who made the quasi-sentient? / Play the dead instrument / Bestiary of impossible, sing to me! / I am the elegy sung / In horrified silence / By a dead world. As Unextinct reaches it conclusion with Leben Ohne Feuer (Life Without Fire), Hideous Divinity are far from done tormenting the listener as they evoke a sense of despair, apocalyptic loss and existential despair. Too late, humanity realises its numbness to its own demise and the loss of its ability to feel passion or joy. It is a no-holds barred onslaught of fury, the band throwing everything they have to offer into the song. Bringing the most primitive elements of their music to the fore, Hideous Divinity signal the destruction of humanity and Di Lorenzo half-singing, half-shouting the final words in a twisted snarling ecstasy. Dust settles on humanity / The upheaval is over! / The flame rests with no delight as Indifference rules the land / Life without sparkle wallows in despair / At the loss of will and meaning, and the warm, and the light of the sun / Which we alone / Alone / Alone we recall!
With Unextinct, Hideous Divinity have stepped up another level with their songwriting, their technicality and their production. Further developing the blackened death metal part of their sound has allowed for a little more variety during recent years and here they embrace it more fully. Unextinct can be enjoyed purely on the level of being entertaining, well written extreme metal; however, for those listeners willing to delve a deeper into the lyrical concepts and the subtle musical and vocal nuances, there is a rich tapestry of dynamic wizardry, powerful performances and all out brutality waiting to be discovered. Witness the dust settling on humanity…..
Unextinct is released on 22nd March 2024 on Century Media.
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Great album. Excellent review. Thanks.