The flickering, century-old image is of a monstrous figure, hulking and crudely formed from clay, lurching into a semblance of life. Its movements are stiff, its expression a vacant mask. This is the Golem, the silent sentinel of German Expressionist cinema, brought to the screen by Paul Wegener in his 1920 masterpiece, “Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam.” In the summer of 2025, these haunting scenes found an unlikely new home: the music video for ‘Quasi-Sentient,’ the latest single from the Italian technical death metal band Hideous Divinity.

Released on July 9, the video, directed with stark elegance by Dema Novakova of Eclypso Studio, is more than a mere aesthetic choice; it is a declaration of intent. For a band operating in a genre often stereotyped for its visceral immediacy, this deliberate reach back into the annals of film history is a profound artistic statement. The band itself called the video a “testament of our love to Cinema,” a final meditation on the world of their most recent album before they retreat to compose new music.

The pairing is uncannily precise. The Golem of folklore is the quintessential quasi-sentient being, an inanimate vessel animated by arcane means, a creature of earth without a soul. The song’s lyrics, delivered in a guttural roar by vocalist Enrico “H.” Di Lorenzo, echo this creation myth: “here comes the Swarm – a horde of dirt and mud,” he bellows, later adding a promise to “bring no less than ruin and pain.” The connection is not subtle, but it is deeply resonant.

The video becomes a visual key, unlocking a thematic door into the band’s sprawling intellectual project. The Golem, a monster born of mud and magic, serves as a powerful avatar for the song’s exploration of artificial consciousness and manufactured suffering. But its true significance lies in how it reflects the larger, more terrifying monster at the heart of the band’s fifth album, ‘Unextinct.’ By using one iconic cinematic horror to illustrate a song from a concept album about another, Hideous Divinity creates a thematic bridge, revealing a sophisticated layering of cultural references where the video for a single track becomes a microcosm of an entire album’s philosophical thesis.

The Sonic Brutality of Hideous Divinity

To craft a soundtrack for such a layered and ambitious narrative required more than mere brute force. Throughout their career, Hideous Divinity has deliberately moved beyond what one critic aptly described as a “cinderblocks fired out of a cannon approach,” developing a far more sophisticated sonic palette. This was not a change for its own sake, but a necessary evolution driven by the increasing complexity of their thematic ambitions.

When the band first emerged from a competitive Italian death metal scene where, as guitarist Enrico Schettino recalls, “to be fast was more than enough,” their identity was forged in pure velocity and technical assault. But as their conceptual frameworks expanded from single films—like John Carpenter’s ‘They Live,’ which inspired their 2012 debut—to encompass literary source material and dense philosophical arguments, their musical language had to transform. A relentless, uniform barrage of sound is simply incapable of tracing the narrative contours of a cursed sea voyage or articulating the existential dread of an indifferent universe.

The result is that the music on ‘Unextinct’ is intentionally “cinematic.” The album’s structure features deliberate “peaks and valleys,” arranging its ferocity into an experience that more closely resembles a film score. The compositions have grown longer and more intricate, with three epic pieces stretching past the seven-minute mark. This was a strategic decision to foster a deeper, more engrossing listen—a form of “storytelling” akin to “musical theater,” designed to defy the disposable streaming culture.

This vision was brought to life with the help of their steadfast producer, Stefano Morabito. The production on ‘Unextinct’ achieves a sound that is both colossal and exceptionally lucid, ensuring that every intricate instrumental layer remains distinct even at its most chaotic. The musical form has evolved to serve its narrative function. Hideous Divinity is no longer just writing death metal about high-concept art; they are writing death metal that is structured like it.

A Soundtrack for a Shipwreck

The album ‘Unextinct,’ released in March 2024, is a towering, 51-minute work of meticulously crafted chaos. It is a concept album, but one that eschews the fantastical dragons and wizards of metal cliché for a more literary and philosophical form of horror. Its narrative is drawn from a single, chilling chapter of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, ‘Dracula’: the captain’s log from the doomed ship Demeter, which unknowingly transports the vampire from the Black Sea to the shores of England.

This focus represents a deliberate act of cultural and philosophical archaeology. In interviews, the band members have expressed a need to reclaim the vampire from a century of romantic revisionism. “We need a monster,” Di Lorenzo explained, “the monster you do not want to deal with,” explicitly rejecting the “cool” and “sexy” figure Dracula has become. To do this, they returned to the sources: Stoker’s text and, crucially, the terrifying, rat-like specter of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film ‘Nosferatu,’ a work they admire for its “unmatched minimalistic horror.” They also find inspiration in Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, which they praise for its atmosphere of “deafening silence” and the void of feeling it evokes.

But Hideous Divinity does not simply retell a story. They infuse this restored, primal monster with a modern, deeply pessimistic philosophical framework borrowed from the American academic Eugene Thacker. In his book ‘In the Dust of This Planet,’ Thacker posits the concept of a “world-not-for-us”—a reality that is fundamentally alien and hostile to human existence. For Hideous Divinity, ‘Nosferatu’ becomes the perfect symbol of this idea. He is not evil in a human sense; he is an impersonal force of nature, an expression of a predatory world that is “unaware of human presence.”

As guitarist and main composer Enrico Schettino explains, the album’s title, ‘Unextinct,’ means “unextinguished; still burning. Something that exists, regardless of the world built and abused by mankind.”

The shipwreck of the Demeter, then, is transformed from a gothic plot device into a potent metaphor for humanity’s existential condition. The band’s own summary of the album’s theme is stark: “The struggle of mankind in a world not intended for us. Facing the fascinating rotten face of reality while trying to find your place—a place that never existed.”

The Unlikely Divinities of Rome

The architects of this intellectualized pandemonium are, perhaps unsurprisingly, far from the chaotic demons their music might suggest. The band, formed in 2007 with roots in the influential Italian group Hour of Penance, is a study in fascinating contradictions. Schettino, the guitarist, is the conceptual engine, a voracious consumer of film and philosophy who meticulously builds the band’s thematic worlds. Their public persona is disarmingly self-aware. “We are nice people with a lot of inner demons,” vocalist Di Lorenzo stated in an interview. “Therefore, we play death metal. Wanna listen?.”

It is Di Lorenzo who most starkly embodies the paradox at the heart of Hideous Divinity. By day, he is a practicing phoniatrician—a medical doctor who specializes in the human voice. He is a healer of the very instrument he uses to produce sounds of profound extremity. His relationship with his art is not just disciplined; it is clinical. For one video, he performed a song with a fiber-optic laryngoscope down his own throat, not as a shocking gimmick, but to provide the medical community with research data on extreme vocal techniques in action.

This reveals a crucial truth about the band’s creative process. The monstrous art they create is the product of highly intellectual, controlled, and even scientific means. The primal scream is not an untamed impulse from the id; it is a controlled technique, performed by a medical professional who understands its physiological mechanics. The musical “frenzy” is the result of what Schettino admits is a slow, painstaking compositional process of writing, listening, and rewriting.

The inner demons are not running rampant; they are being studied under a microscope. This intellectual distance is precisely what allows them to explore the nature of horror with such unnerving depth and control.

The Unextinguished World Tour

Since the release of ‘Unextinct,’ Hideous Divinity has been a tireless touring entity. Following a European run with veterans Nile, their 2025 schedule remains dense, with appearances at major festivals like Brutal Assault in the Czech Republic and Summerbreeze in Germany.

However, the band was forced to cancel its planned headlining tour across the United States of America. In an official statement, the band explained the decision was made due to the high financial risk of the United States of America work visa application process. Their legal counsel warned of a sharp increase in visa rejections, and with non-refundable legal fees costing between $6,000 and $8,000, the band deemed the risk of a rejected petition one they “simply cannot take.”

Brutal Assault is one of Europe’s most renowned open-air extreme metal festivals, held annually in the unique setting of the Josefov Fortress, an eighteenth-century military fortress in Jaroměř, Czech Republic. The festival, scheduled from August 6-9, 2025, is known for its eclectic and large lineup, featuring over 125 bands across five stages, and attracts around 15,000 attendees from around the world. Beyond the music, the festival is celebrated for its historic and atmospheric location, cheap Czech beer, diverse food options, horror cinema screenings, and art exhibitions.

In this context, a statement from Di Lorenzo about the band’s purpose takes on its full weight. “Music is a beautiful answer to a frightening question,” he said. “Keep on asking”. The album ‘Unextinct’ is their frightening question, a meticulously researched and passionately argued thesis on the horror of a world not made for us. The tour is their beautiful answer, delivered in person, night after night—a shared, cathartic ritual of staring into the abyss, together.

Conclusion

For Hideous Divinity, the live show is not a mere promotional obligation. It is the crucial, final act of their artistic process, the moment the private, intellectual concept of the album becomes a public, visceral, and shared experience. Fan accounts praise their ability to replicate the new album’s complex material with stunning precision, with one concertgoer noting they “almost stole the spotlight from Hypocrisy” on a previous tour. This is where their ambition to create “musical theater” is fully realized, as the audience is invited aboard the Demeter to collectively confront the album’s central, terrifying proposition.

In this context, a statement from vocalist Enrico Di Lorenzo about the band’s purpose takes on its full weight. “Music is a beautiful answer to a frightening question,” he said. “Keep on asking.” The album ‘Unextinct’ is their frightening question, a meticulously researched and passionately argued thesis on the horror of a world not made for us. The tour is their beautiful answer, delivered in person, night after night—a shared, cathartic ritual of staring into the abyss, together.