Hideous Divinity

Italian/Norwegian metallers Hideous Divinity forge a crushing yet old-school strain of death metal that draws equally from technical precision and blackened extremity. Guitarist Enrico Schettino, a co-founder of Hour of Penance, launched the group in 2006. Early lineup instability gave way to a settled roster by 2010, enabling festival appearances and a subsequent contract with Unique Leader Records. Their debut album, the socio-political/sci-fi epic Obeisance Rising, surfaced in 2012 and delivered an uncompromising assault inspired by John Carpenter’s 1988 cult film They Live, while summoning echoes of Nile, Hate, and Immolation.

The 2014 follow-up Cobra Verde took its cue from Werner Herzog’s gritty 1987 motion picture and intensified the band’s attack, a trajectory continued on the ambitious 2017 concept album Adveniens. Hideous Divinity then moved to Century Media for the unrelenting fourth album Simulacrum in 2019. Two years afterward they issued the Alien-inspired EP LV-426, maintaining their longstanding fascination with classic science-fiction and horror cinema while testing the outer limits of extreme metal. In 2024 the band released Unextinct, its first album drawn not from a film but from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.