I will be the first one to admit, that with the sheer volume of records coming out each year by so many bands in so many genres, subgenres, and microgenres, that entire catalogs slip through the cracks. Moreso than completely missed or ignored, many records and bands just don’t get their fair share of playtime to cement themselves in your mind. All of this is to say that I apologize for not delving deeper into Hideous Divinity’s catalog.

To me, Hideous Divinity always felt like the lesser step-brother of symphonic extreme metal band Fleshgod Apocalypse, and the tech-death bombastic band Hour of Penance. In particular, Hideous Divinity always felt to me as too similar to Hour of Penance to give them a fair appraisal on their own merit. All of the bands just mentioned being Italian doesn’t help their blending in my head, as I am sure is the case for many other fans as well. While I briefly gave both Advieniens and Simulacrum a playthrough or two, they quickly fell out of rotation in a sea of other releases that held my attention for longer. When 2024’s Unexist came across my desk, I finally decided it was time to give these brutal Romans the focus they were due.

Hideous Divinity is part of a quickly shrinking brand of technical modern death metal. While other bands are vying to be the grittiest, the techniest, the most evil, the most polarizing in their imagery or themes, there is a vanishingly small set of bands that are just in it to write straightforward pummeling death metal. The Italian breed of modern death metal has always leaned more into the anti-religious grandiosity, with large-scale soundscapes, in-your-face power chorded riffs, plenty of double bass and blast beats, and low-mid register growls. Hideous Divinity falls squarely in that camp, and 2024’s Unexist is a showcase of the better examples of those genre tropes.

After the introlude, “Dust Settles on Humanity”, the first released single “The Numinous One” was a bold choice, clocking in at seven minutes, this is a mammoth track, featuring several tempo and thematic changes. In retrospect, it is one of the better tracks to show the evolution of the Hideous Divinity sound. It is tighter than a vice grip, unrelentingly punchy, yet it has just enough of that epic razzle dazzle that makes the band what it is. “Quasi-Sentient” opens in an almost Aborted-esque frenzy. Coming off their latest banger Vault of Horrors, this similarity in my head shot the track to the standout list.

While the three interlude tracks, “Dust Settles on Humanity”, “Hair Dirt Mud”, and “Der Verlorene Sohn” (The Erased Son) do go a ways in breaking up Unexist into “chapters”, the record itself does falter insofar that it feels like one giant mush of intensity. While not the most egregious examples of the “red mist”, Unexist did lose me for long sections. Not because the sections and arrangements were poorly written or executed, but because the lack of hooks causes a lot of that intensity to be filed as background music. Therein lies my issue with most modern death metal bands, the lack of hooks that the much maligned “core” family of genres enjoy to a much higher degree. The low register tremolo picked riffs, while fun, do not lend much to memorability or sustained enjoyability so large sections of it are nearly instantly forgotten. A track like “Mysterium Tremendum” does have that special sauce in its riffs that caused me to be able to hum riffs after the fact, which instantly raises the value of the track into standout territory.

The modern production, nearing flattened compression, also contributes to the inevitable listener fatigue. While the guitars celebrate greater clarity in the slower parts, especially when the band employs cleaner sections with post-amp effects, and the bass pokes its head above the mix ever so often, the mix during the busier parts gets squished into a mulch of indistinguishable ferocity

Unexist is a solid slab of modern Italian death metal with plenty of grandiosity in its songwriting. While a worthy addition to the catalog, Hideous Divinity continues to struggle with weaving catchiness into their brutality, which may lead to Unexist falling out of rotation quicker than deserved in a sea of innumerable new metal releases.