A cursory glance at the song titles ("The Kindling," "Funeral Mist," etc.) listed on Divine Rapture's debut album, The Burning Passion, is enough to confirm the band's wholesale obsession with all things flaming and fiery. And no, we're not talking summer cookouts folks, but good old hellfire itself! Hailing from Pennsylvania, this technically gifted quartet has obviously completed every homework assignment in Death Metal 101. Crushing, clinical, and maniacally fast, standout tracks "Your Time Has Come," "My Demon, Your Dove," and "Black Moon Harvest" use Morbid Angel and Deicide as obvious touchstones, issuing gurgling vocals, corrosive, tuneless riffing, and metronome-like speed beats at a thousand miles a minute. Well-placed symphonic interludes break up the action just long enough for listeners to come up for breath -- then proceed to violently dunk them under the waves yet again, victims cast into the churning maelstrom of sound. Not for the timid, The Burning Passion is sanity-defying stuff. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia