REVIEWED: Hideous Divinity - ‘LV-426’

The mere mention of a death metal band in the same breath as groove-laden genre kings Aborted is enough to get us salivating with anticipation from the word ‘go’. But although Hideous Divinity share common prestige in the shape of uber-talented bassist Stefano Franceschini, these Italian aggressors favour an altogether more technical brand of brutalising extremity.

Like the masterful, blastbeat-laden carnage of their Belgian brethren, vicious three-tracker ‘LV-426’ revels in bone-splintering extremes of aggression, having taken its title from that of the notorious, alien-infested moon featured in sci-fi horror classic Alien. With its flesh-scalding accents of tremolo and vocal cord-liquefying shrieks assuming a deliciously abrasive assault over a frantically accelerating hail of propulsive blasts, ‘Acheron, Stream of Woe’ makes for a pleasingly brutalising opener. Displaying tautly manipulated pacing and control through every densely sinuous and percussive stylistic shift, there’s no shortage of black-hearted menace lurking in the monstrously elongated lines of bass work interwoven in amongst its manic implosions of aggression. True to its pleasingly graphic-sounding title, ‘Chestburst’ explodes forth in a delirious orgy of battering ultra-violence, its frenetic flurries of guitar flying hither and thither like white-hot fragments of airborne shrapnel. Thus far, a skilful and unrelenting exercise in aggression that batters the senses into submission without barely missing a beat.

But it’s not until we arrive at Coheed and Cambria cover ‘Delirium Trigger’ that we find Hideous Divinity at their darkly arresting finest as intricately unfurling lines of fretwork smoulder with sinister majesty alongside grandiose slabs of bass-laden groove that abound with all the vast, apocalyptic impact of a violent planetary collision. From here, we’re hurled headlong into a frenzy of pummelling aggression that, despite the substantial brawn and brute force on show here, does nothing to compromise the razor-keen precision with which its notey intricacies are handled.

In sum, a solid and, at times, brutally compelling slab of sonic extremity.

7.5/10

‘LV-426’ is out 23rd April via Century Media