Divine Rapture
The Burning Passion
8.3
"Unique debut album from the U.S. Death Metal band. The Music exhibits astonishing harmonic clarity and brutality that is reinforced by a variety of influences in several genres", so says the promo-sheet description. Being that Divine Rapture are a band that is basically more or less from my hometown, and I have known about for a long time before they got signed by Listenable, and knowing this is not their debut album (hat would be their 1999 s/t) I can more or less vouch for that description. Afterwards they shacked up with Erik Rutan and recorded a 4 song demo that I guess got them signed, and also doing a Death cover (Pull the Plug) and a Morbid Angel cover (World of Shit- The Promised Land) for tribute albums for both bands, I guess I can say Divine Rapture is one of Pennsylvania's bigger Metal bands now... thinking that other than them we have such bands as Blood Storm, Sathanas, Circle of Dead Children and an instrumental prog band on Relapse records. I see Divine Rapture getting very noticed in a short amount of time, I feel some will draw ties to country-mates Vehemence as being somewhat of a Brutal/Melodic Death metal band. Divine Rapture is more of a dark and atmosperic band than Vehemence though, with odd clips of shrill and horrified screaming abound the album as well as eeiry parts and odd instruments being used in parts. The actual instrumentation of the band is fairly technical, I know the guys took alot of time putting this album together, not wanting to settle for too little, and it seems to have paid off, this will most likely be on a good amount of Death metallers top 20's atleast for the year. Track five of the album "The Defying, The Sorrow, The Awakening" is an almost Viking-Metal like instrumental done with a keyboard mostly, and also having the odd sounds of a woman crying through much of it, they obviously try to put alot of emotion into their music. This is one of the best Death Metal "debut" albums I have ever heard, they have matured far and wide since their self-released s/t. Once again I have to mention how much Vehemence fans will like Divine Rapture, like Vehemence, D.R. inject a good dose of pain and anguish into their material, making it a very dark and brooding album. The band is still very young, and with this strong of an album already, it's odd to imagine where the band might be in five years, but I would like to think it would be as one of the biggest and the best in the scene here in america, with how much of an explosion Vehemence got with "God was Created", I really believe that "The Burning Passion" is going to recieve a ton of interest. The album's production by Babak Davodian (Guitarist & Keyboardist in the band) is very well done and perfectly captures the dark atmosphere of the albums, the vocals range from a shrill demon-growl to a deep brutal growl, literally changing and combining all over the place on the disc. One could also compare elements of the band to New York's Immolation, in that like the NYDM gods, they really give a sense of pain, emotion and black hearted hate into their music, eeiry passages litter the album which makes for many twists and turns and harmonic sections filling the songs in odd places, making for an almost Death-like progressive streak (though not in the same amount), the album's clips and inserts range from the sound of crackling fire, to a man screaming in tortured pain. Certainly one of the more original sounding Death Metal albums of the year as well as one of the best. I say you should order this as soon as it is available, Listenable made a good choice when they decided to give this young American band a shot, if you enjoy very dark and painfilled music, this is for you, a great album with supurb instrumentation and atmosphere, if you like what you have heard so far, definitely "buy or die"! I look forward to a great future of albums from my homestate's own Divine Rapture. Best Tracks: The whole album! it flows extremely well.
