I may have never reviewed them (mostly because it's impossible to translate room-filling floods of ejaculate into text), but Hour of Penance from 2008-2014 was pretty much untouchable. I think Regicide was a bit of a step down, but the stretch from The Vile Conception to Sedition was fucking phenomenal. Since they've started to fall off and become less ridiculously insane, I and many other fans have been looking for a new source to scratch the itch that they used to scratch so fucking well. Enter Hideous Divinity, who have been around for a little while and even contain some former members of Hour of Penance, but only truly came into form for me on their 2017 outing, Adveniens.
This album is just flat out fucking nuts. There is barely a nanosecond where the drums aren't propelling the band to the front of the pack basically all by themselves. In terms of insane tech death, they don't really focus a whole lot on sheer technicality. You're not going to find endless noodly sweep runs and bloodly oodlebloodle bass diddlings here. Instead the focus on basically playing Suffocation on fast forward. Seriously, this is some of the most obnoxiously fast and ripping death metal on the market today, interspersed with brutal breakdowns that don't snap your neck as much as shake you violently. Even when the guitars slow down and focus on some crushing chugs instead of the rampant tremolo abuse that takes up a good portion of the album, the drummer is still fucking losing his mind. It's very clearly the highlight of the album and that works for me. I love this style of full forward lunacy in tech death that Italy seems to pump out regularly.
Despite the single minded focus on indiscriminate obliteration, Adveniens manages to be shockingly dynamic as well. There are multiple atmospheric parts acting as the outro for several songs, and almost nothing falls into a standard song structure. Two of the three opening tracks are marathon lengths for tech death, and they throw enough riffs at you to keep it from becoming stale. This is where Krisiun failed on The Great Execution, another very busy death metal album that focused on long songs. The difference is that the Brazilians desperately needed to trim the fat as most of the tracks on that album felt overblown and drawn out, whereas the Italians here go for total sensory overload and hit the sweet spot. Despite the constant blasting and drill-wristed ripping guitars, there is a slathering of sinister atmosphere that keeps the whole thing cohesive and varied. It just feels evil, like how Hour of Penance was peddling blasphemy so intense that I was pretty sure I was unconsecrating every holy building in a few mile radius every time I listened to Paradogma. Adveniens gives the same vibe. This is furious and deadly, and it just oozes malevolence with every 110 degree left turn on the journey. Like most albums in this style, it's hard to pinpoint individual songs to highlight, but it rides at such a consistently high plateau that it doesn't really matter. Hideous Divinity has effectively replaced my beloved Hour of Penance as the tech death band to lead us into the future, and they're definitely up to the challenge.
RATING - 88%
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