UNCHOSEN ONES – Divine Power Flowing

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7.5

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“Divine Power Flowing”, the second album by the Spanish Unchosen Ones, is truly a decent bowler: despite the still short career (the debut in fact only dates back to 2023), this work already presents itself as a rather mature and personal album, immediately showing a stylistic variety and clarity of intent that bodes well for the future.
Presented in the promotional notes as a power metal album with strong heavy influences, “Divine Power Flowing” reveals itself after just a few listens to be much richer and more multifaceted than suggested by the simple genre label. In fact, the power base adds a marked epic inspiration, light progressive nuances and a strong attention to the construction of effective melodies; elements that often lead the band to approach models like Kamelot or Firewind more than the more canonical Helloween or Gamma Ray.

If the initial “Idols & Kings”, after a short guitar intro, immediately demonstrates its ability to play with the faster and more Teutonic declinations of power metal, already with the second song “The Void” the language expands significantly: the tempos slow down, keyboards and orchestrations take on a structural role and no longer a simple accompaniment, while Javier Calderon's voice gains in expressiveness and warmth. The result is a song with a strong emotional charge, capable of leaving a deeper impression from the first listens.
The direction taken is confirmed with the third episode, “Cursed Without a Cause”, which further raises the qualitative bar. The influence of their compatriots Dark Moor, already perceptible previously, emerges here in a more marked way, supported by an effective chorus and an enveloping carpet of keyboards that accompanies Fran Romero's essential guitars.
The speed and the references to the most classic power return to be felt throughout the listening session – “Caught By The Wind” is a clear example of this with its double drum beat – but what is most striking are the stylistic contaminations inserted naturally into the band's sound. In this regard, the refined solo solutions of “Synthetic Wave Horizon” stand out, the forays into the more traditional heavy of “Whirlgig Saw” (the introductory riff is really tasty) and the epic push of the two songs that probably represent the best moments of the lot: the title track “Divine Power Flowing” and the final “Death and Deliverance”, a small jewel of melodic heavy in which instrumental expertise and taste for the melody.

The album has a relatively short duration and almost leaves the feeling of ending too soon, but overall it offers more than one might expect. The range of solutions adopted, the coherence with which they are developed and the care evident in the production and arrangements give the work a variety and depth that we cannot help but applaud.
“Divine Power Flowing” is in all respects a mature album, capable of speaking to listeners from different areas of metal and of managing the inputs between power, prog, heavy and melodic metal with balance; a balance obviously still perfectible, but already convincing in most of its passages.
Precisely by virtue of this successful stylistic synthesis, we can only recommend listening to it.