Band:	Divine Rapture
Album:	The Burning Passion
Style:	Death metal
Release date:	October 2003

01. The Kindling
02. Your Time Has Come
03. Severed
04. My Demon, Your Dove
05. The Deifying, The Sorrow, The Awakening
06. Funeral Mist
07. Affliction Of Faith
08. Black Moon Harvest
09. Spirit Storm Serenade
10. No Future, No Past
11. The Smothering

2004 have been a very decent year for death metal in my opinion. Nothing extra ordinary or very special comes to my mind and as I'm really searching hard to find that very special album that could change my opinion, all I can say is that this is certainly not the one.

Divine Rapture hails from USA, and The Burning Passion is their second full length album. While the band claims that they are "establishing themselves as one of the premiere death metal acts of the new millennium", I must say that I honestly can't see a very bright future for this band. ´

The album itself is a very boring and ordinary death metal album and it really does not take much thinking to notice that their main influence is obviously Morbid Angel, but influences from other bands such as Nile can also be heard, and if I'm not totally paranoid I think that I can actually hear some Immolation in their songs too.

The problem I see with this band is that I feel like they are stuck into a big pile of mud, the music is not moving and everything is stuck somehow, although the music is fast and brutal as death metal is supposed to be, but there is still no real "energy" in the music, there is no "force" in the music that makes you want to bang your head and go totally nuts. In fact, I think that the only reason that this album doesn't put me to sleep (or does it?) is only because of the guitar work. The guitars are the only good thing about this album and the only thing that avoids you from falling asleep, but then again, even the guitar sound somehow doesn't really sound as if it accompanies the rest of the music and I feel like it somehow stands aside from the rest of the music.

Anyhow, if you are a diehard death metal fan and you collect all death metal releases, then I guess you must have this one in your collection too (after all I'm sure there are way worse death metal releases this year), but I would personally prefer to spend my money on something better than this.