UMUR Malevolent Rapture is the debut full-length studio album by Dutch death/ thrash act Legion of the Damned. The album was released in January 2006 by Massacre Records. The band was formerly known as Occult and released no less than 5 full-length studio albums between 1994 and 2003. Malevolent Rapture was originally intended to be the 6th full-length studio album by Occult but the band opted for a name change just prior to the album´s release.

I´m not terribly familiar with Occult, but as far as I´ve been able to read from reviews of Occult albums around the net and from my own recollection, they played a blackened death/ thrash style. Legion of the Damned still play death/ thrash but the blackened part of Occult´s music is gone. The music on Malevolent Rapture is brutal and fiercely aggressive death/ thrash with a sneering and caustic sounding lead vocalist. There is a relentless aggressive energy in the music and I´m thinking of a cross between early The Haunted and Defleshed. Death/ thrash albums are usually pretty one-dimensional sizes and while variation isn´t exactly in the high seat on Malevolent Rapture either, there is enough variation here to ensure that the album never gets tiresome. There are some really strong hooklines in the choruses, which means that I´m able shout along to them and that´s a plus in this case. So while the album certainly isn´t melodic it´s quite memorable anyway.

The production by Andy Classen is raw, in your face and fortunately not too polished.

I´m a sucker for this kind of aggressive and brutal death/ thrash, so it´s no surprise that I´m really fond of Malevolent Rapture but even without my positive glasses on this is an album that deserves somewhere between 3.5 - 4 star rating.