Divine Rapture - Promo 2001

DIVINE RAPTURE - Promo 2001

I don’t really remember how it all began, but around 2001 I was contacted by one of the Hrubovcak brothers – or maybe I got in touch with them, I just don’t remember… and I received a truly awesome promotional CDR with their band’s newest recording. The band was called Divine Rapture and I seriously was blown away by their music. I did interview with them for my fanzine, soon later I also bought the band’s full length “The Burning Passion” and damn, for me these were some of the best US death metal sounds, which I’ve heard back in the early 00’s. Sadly, the band didn’t really get much recognition I think, Hrubovcak brothers now play in some other bands like Azure Emote, Monstrosity, Hate Eternal, etc. But I do hope they’ll return with Divine Rapture in the future also, because it was just a killer combo. Quite recently I played that old “Promo 2001”, which I received years ago and damn... this music still sounds so fuckin awesome, so I have to make this review, to recommend you such a fuckin excellent, but maybe forgotten band!

I was actually afraid that the CDr won’t be playable after all these years, but luckily it still plays great. And music is also great. Maybe the production could have been better, but it’s not tragic either, so what the hell... Let’s enjoy these three fantastic songs! Stylistically Divine Rapture sounds hugely like Morbid Angel – and I mean it 666%; they had the similar vibe, similar riffage, atmosphere in their music, similar patterns… Simply, there are many resemblances. One may accuse Divine Rapture for plagiarism or whatever, but come on, don’t say that! I am sure that Morbid Angel would love to compose such killer tracks like these three beautiful anthems. They are all fast, they crush with some absolutely fantastic riffs, I love the blasting parts, but also the sudden tempo changes, slower bits are insanely good. The music is powerful as fuck, some of these riffs are like WWWWOOOOWWW, this is so awesome, so memorable, not just brutal and fast, but also with so many harmonies and stuff like that! The music is obviously quite technical, the drumming is perfect, guitar leads are just sick… damn, and the vocalist is so good that maybe he should step in for the weak David Vincent in the past few years. So, great riffs, fantastic arrangements... simply everything about these three tracks is near perfection, so I am very surprised that such strong material and band wasn’t recognized more. Personally I love it!

As a bonus we have two covers here. First, there’s Death’s “Pull the Plug”, surely one of the best death metal songs of all time. But I don’t like Divine Rapture’s version so much. The sound quality of it is pretty poor, the guitars and drums sound so damn artificial, like they were computer made that it’s basically with no sign of that aggression and dark atmosphere of the original. More so, the band added some keyboard here and there what sucks a lot and does not fit at all. Much better is the second of the two covers, which is – what a surprise – Morbid Angel’s “World of Shit”. It’s fantastic song and I am glad to say that Divine Rapture played with really damn well, very close to the original and the production in this cover is also great; powerful, heavy… well done here!

Standout tracks: “Affliction”, “My Demon, Your Dove”

Final rate: 90/100