The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us that the phrase “slash and burn” originated as the name for an ancient agricultural technique that involves cutting trees and other natural growth and then burning them to ash, once dried, in order to create fields for new growth. That phrase springs to mind immediately upon hearing “Sinister and Demented”, the new song by Italy’s Hideous Divinity that premiered not long ago. It appears on their forthcoming album Cobra Verde.
The song is an assault of high-speed sonic decimation. It threshes, it thrashes, and then it burns in a super-heated conflagration. But so complete is the devastation that it’s hard to imagine that anything will grow from the scorched ground it leaves behind.
Everything in the song is geared toward jolting the listener with galvanizing power — from the blazing fretwork to the jaw-dropping drumwork to the ravaging vocals (which sound more like a pack of wolves than a single human). Simply from the perspective of technical proficiency, this is technical death metal of a very high order. Continue reading »