Destroying Divinity - Hollow Dominion

DESTROYING DIVINITY - Hollow Dominion (LAVADOME Productions - CD 2014)

Here’s another new release from Lavadome Productions and another brutal death metal force from the Czech Republic! This one is called Destroying Divinity and certainly they’re a band, which fits Heaving Earth perfectly. I mean both bands play similar type of death metal, both are Czech and both present similar high quality and impressive, pure musical slaughter on their albums. But I must say that this is the first time when I hear about Destroying Divinity. And it is surprising, as it turns out that “Hollow Dominion” is already their fourth (!) full length album, the previous one was titled “Dark Future” and was released on different label in 2010. The band is rather slow working, as first two CDs were released in 2002 and 2004, then they had a long break of six years and now another four years later Destroying Divinity releases “Hollow Dominion”. But I suppose it’s the matter of quality over quantity. And quality death metal is what you’ll hear on the new album… and personally I will surely try to find all previous albums also, as I am very curious about them, and besides, I like to collect all albums from bands I like.

Anyway, let’s talk about “Hollow Dominion”. I mentioned that Destroying Divinity fits well to such Heaving Earth… surely both bands take a lot of influence from the US death metal scene, and such bands as Hate Eternal, Vital Remains, Morbid Angel, Immolation, Cannibal Corpse. I would also mention some European brutal acts, such as Sinister (definitely!), Severe Torture, some Polish acts like Lost Soul, (early) Decapitated or Trauma… It’s brutal, quite technical, dense and powerful death metal, maybe not overwhelmingly original or sophisticated, but damn, Destroying Divinity do know how to compose quality music. I mean, there are so many truly fantastic riffs, the songs are really well built and arranged. Some slower parts are especially impressive in my opinion, as they have almost slightly melodic and dark feeling, which maybe sounds similar to some early Immolation LPs, but the result is truly great. Obviously “Hollow Dominion” also has quite few neckbreaking, crushing and fast fragments, but I am actually glad that Destroying Divinity often tried to vary their music, flawlessly switching the paces and intensity of the riffs / drumming. There’re many textures I think, many really impressive fragments and great ideas, you simply must listen to the album carefully to pick them up from the annihilating wall of death metal slaughter.

One of the finest demonstrations of brutality is definitely the opening track “The Eternity Guardians”, which is just pure violence, fast and massive, but with an amazing slower piece near the end. It smoothly passes into “Burning Divine Domination”, which probably is my favourite song here, as I like the most when Destroying Divinity plays slower pieces; this one sounds like a killer mixture of Immolation and Morbid Angel and damn, what a bloody fantastic track! Also such “The Suffering Redemption” or “Inner Slavery” really stick in my memory, with some seriously amazing riffs. But really, the whole “Hollow Dominion” is that great mixture of fast and mid paced death metal, very well balanced, dynamic, powerful and deadly effective. Yes, it’s nothing superbly original, just traditional brutal death metal, classic to the core… but do we require anything else from bands like this? No, as long as it’s superbly played, arranged and composed… “Hollow Dominion” delivers all that.

Standout tracks: “Burning Divine Domination”, “Empire of Emptiness”, “The Suffering Redemption”, “Sinful Omens”

Final rate: 80/100