Rise - Divine Aeternum (2001)

   Rise formed in the early '90s as a death metal band with more Hungarian references than it would be usual. These appearing in occasional medieval features, on the album arts and even in the language sometimes, thanks to their frontman with Hungarian background.
   To give some historical/mythical taste to anti-Christian and satanic concept is definitely a genuine and uncommon perspective, but somehow it fits well. Their early raw style went through a great progression during the years. On "Divine Aeternum" a musically mature and well experienced band could be heard. Their style changed a bit too as they involved a constant symphonic background that leads through the album. This primped up their wild themes and gave them a theatrical main impression. Instead of the contrast of the symphonies and the death metal themes, they focused on to create balance, so they had to involve more melodies into their themes. They accomplished their imaginations creatively, "Divine Aeternum" became far more diverse than their previous albums. This also resulted that their music had to lose from it's unfriendly level, but there's still enough aggressiveness left to not let the listener to daydream about endless flowery fields, but blood-soaked battlefields instead. This album was kind of extraordinary, because similar experiments were just about to appear that time in the metal scene.