Album Review: Hideous Divinity – Unextinct (Century Media Records)

Hideous Divinity, a vanguard in the realm of technical death metal, will release their latest full-length album, ‘Unextinct’, via Century Media Records on March 22nd, 2024. This album marks a profound exploration of existential paradoxes and cosmic fear, exploring the divine horror of numinous life and humanity’s futile sovereignty.

As boundary pushing as always, the tech-death style of Hideous Divinity continues to be like nothing else. Taking punishing heaviness and malicious technicality, then twisting it via the medium of horror, but in an enigmatic way. Yes, you can head-bang yourself into oblivion, but your ears can’t ignore the layers of detail that exists in every track. The more you un-peel, the more there are, it’s a never-ending cornucopia of intensity.

Of course, long-term fans of Hideous Divinity will be familiar with these statements as the band has made a big name for themselves in the realm of extreme music. Yet, there’s been nothing as hopelessly dark sounding as this from them to date.

If you want this album summed up, it can be simply said that it goes f**king hard from the very start and doesn’t let up for over 50 minutes. Every time it seems as though Hideous Divinity have pushed the extreme bar to its highest height, they find even more creative ways to smash heads and break bones. It is savage, there’s no other way to describe it than that.

However, its brutality is just one aspect of its appealing nature. There is cosmic ambience and this serves to heighten the story-telling aspect of some tracks. Then there is the magic they create with instrumental technicalities and progressive creativity that beggar’s belief. Matched by a vocal performance that is filled with so much venom and bile, it will poison the soul. Listening to what Hideous Divinity do here, how far they push the boundaries, and how they do it with such ease, is what makes this an album of the year contender.

Every single member of this band is pulling a shift here. The guitars are wild, riffs coming thick and fast, but always varied. Sometimes smoothly cutting through flesh, sometimes sawing without care, and always leaving you feeling violated. The drumming can best be described as bludgeoning, and the bass reverbs throughout the body. As for those vocals? If so much of this album wasn’t rooted in unfathomable horror, you’d know it was based off the throat-tearing howls and screams.

It’s brilliant. Tech-death at its finest, and once again, Hideous Divinity have raised the bar for all who exist in this genre. Don’t even try to match them though, just try to keep up.

Hideous Divinity – Unextinct Track Listing:

1. Dust Settles on Humanity
2. The Numinous One
3. Against The Sovereignty of Mankind
4. Atto Quarto The Horror Paradox
5. Quasi-Sentient
6. Hair Dirt Mud
7. More Than Many Never One
8. Der Verlorene Sohn
9. Mysterium Tremendum
10. Leben Ohne Feuer

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