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This Aussie band really blew me away with their 2014 album Liberator, and so I was really keen to get my hands on their follow-up. Third album overall for Divine Ascension that does not see them stepping back so much as not moving forward.

There's not really any one thing you can point to and say it's the reason why this album is lesser than the one that came before it. The musicianship is impressive, the leads are stellar, and Jennifer Borg's powerful vocals and endless charisma are in full force. Mostly it seems to be that the songwriting is just a notch below what they brought us on Liberator. I mean, it's never easy to follow up a breakout album, I get that, and maybe there wasn't any place for the band to go. But to be a progressive band of any kind, you have to keep pushing forward, keep developing your sound and hitting new highs.

The Uncovering is a solid album, but it is very much Liberator Part Two, only not quite as good. The opener "Evermore" is such a prototypical Divine Ascension song you will swear you already heard it. The album has some real high points, such as the blazing riffs of "The Fallen" and the hooky "Revolution Phase", but there are also dead spots on the album, like the rather dull "Prisoner" and the slog that is "Pursuit of Desire". Even on lesser cuts, Divine Ascension have a great deal of polish and a killer production job, so things sound exciting on the surface, but then you find the songs just dragging and not inspiring the constant surprise and excitement you got on Liberator. This is not a bad album, but in comparison to the one it's following, it can't really hold up. Rather than a great album, we have to make do with a good one.