If you totally worship IN FLAMES and you simply can’t wait for their next album to come out, you better check out a nearly perfect blueprint of those Swedish masters of Melodic Death. In their countrymen DIVINE SOULS you’ll definitely get what you’re looking for. These five guys have exactly copied IN FLAMES’ successful songwriting formular on their first full length “Embodiment” with the only little difference that their vocal delivery is a little more harsh and aggressive than what Anders Fridén usually comes up with. Even though this has originally just been a six song promo tape, it offers a very good production, strong musicianship and the typical memorabe Heavy Metal melody lines in combination with the aggression of Death / Thrash Metal. Italy’s Scarlet Records signed the band straight away, and to make this a full length album (which should easily appeal to the mainstream crowds) two more songs were simply added shortly after. But DIVINE SOULS still have a big problem: they are completely lacking in uniqueness, which seems to be the case ever since they started out as CROMLECH. According to their info sheet they were already back then just following the path of ENTOMBED, DISMEMBER and the likes until they discovered the NWOSMDM (New Wave Of Swedish Melodic Death Metal), changed their name into DIVINE SOULS in 1997 and started to play more melodic. That’s not necessarily what I consider an honest attitude… So, I’m really looking forward to their musical evolution in the near future as brutal Death Metal is nowadays back in the spotlight again.