California-based Death Metal act RISE, made a visit to Hungary in 2000 to record their 3rd full-length studio album there, using HSB Studios for their recordings. The album was named as "Divine Aeternum", showing a clear musical development from the band’s two previous albums, "Slaves of Illusion" (2000) and "Shadow Of Ruins" (1999), that are both very hard to come by these days. "Divine Aeternum" was a relatively atmospheric and slightly keyboard-driven album, blending both Black and Death Metal in a pretty successful way – and absolutely showing the musical direction where the band was heading to with their next release to come (which was their truly fantastic 4th studio album, titled "Pentagramnation", released 8 years after "Divine Aeternum", in 2009). RISE concentrated on creating pretty epic songs on "Divine Aeternum"; 5 out of 9 songs that they got featured for "Divine Aeternum", were over 6 minutes in length – the longest track, which is the title track of the album, clocking at the 7:29 minute mark. Without any doubts, the guys paid quite a lot of attention to their song structures, trying to make them to sound as massive and epic pieces of blackened and symphonic Death Metal as they could with the very best of their abilities at that time – and in which they thankfully also succeeded at quite darn well in my opinion as well. Vocalist, guitarist and bassist István Lendvay (who, by the way, has also played bass in the live line-up of VITAL REMAINS) seemed to really know back then how he wanted to develop the sound of his band RISE further from the sound they had already adopted on "Divine Aeternum". Also, István’s credits as a wonderful Death Metal growler and quite phenomenal instrumentalist, cannot be left totally ignored on "Divine Aeternum" either. He had a true killer sense to make the songs to stand out on "Divine Aeternum" as a music composer – plus most importantly, a knowledge how to do it in a pleasing enough way, too. As its own individual package, "Divine Aeternum" is a strong release content wise, even if they could have paid a bit more attention to the snare drum’s sound, which at times comes a bit to close to the surface on this record. Plus, the guitar sound could have needed a bit more power and heaviness to it but then again those are just minor complaints about this otherwise strong and carefully thought out record music wise. You can get this record directly from the band; they still do have some copies available. Just remember don’t hold your decision to contact the band for a copy for too long because they obviously won’t last forever. www.risedeathmetal.com – or www.myspace.com/risedeathmetal