The well known melodic power/progressive Swedish metallers Evergrey have returned this year after “Torn” of 2008 and after a change in the 3/5 of their lineup, leaving only the keyboard player Rickard Zander by the band’s mastermind Tom Englund’s side. The new composition consist of Marcus Jidell (guitar), Johan Niemann (bass ) and Hannes Van Dahl (drums).

Evergrey with their previous release “Torn” had turned their sound into simpler song structures, by presenting an album that was mostly based on Tom Englund’s vocals lines and lacking of their previous “darker” and sophisticated way of compositions and playing, which was their trademark in previous works like “Recreation  Day”, “Solitude, Dominance, Tragedy”  & “Inner Circle” .

Fortunately the balance in songwriting and performance is returning with “Glorious Collision”, by introducing freshness and exceptional melodies, starting from the introductory and one of the album’s strongest moments «Leave It Behind Us», a track that brings us back to the good old times. The songs are full of dynamic, sentimental playing, the infamous performance of Englund’s vocals, but also really interesting ideas and guitar solos, which at last are making themselves obvious again, as well as dark, atmospheric keyboards.

This time the orchestration in the total of 13 songs is very satisfactory with an equal mixing in all instruments, without degrading any of them. All of the songs are really remarkable, such as  “You”, “Frozen” with its powerful, catchy refrain, one of the band’s trademarks, “Restoring The Loss”,  “The Phantom Letters’’ with the acoustic guitar opener that continues with a powerful refrain with beautiful and clean guitar parts.

“It Comes From Within’’ is a track that starts by speeding up the tempo  with its solid guitars, to end in a catchy refrain, like also happens with “I am Drowning Alone” and verifying guitar melodies throughout the song. The exquisite  ballad “...And The Distance” which is the album’s closing track is one of the best and most sentimental ballads ever written by Evergrey, while generally one could not complain about the songs’ quality, since they are all at a high level. The totally sentimental, dark melancholy in Englund’s performance is present for once more at its peak, and certainly here we are not dealing with a band that is here to raise our spirits, but recall of our past and emphasize in the difficulties of human relationships.

Englund’s new company with “Glorious Collision” is definitely starting to find it’s upwards and high quality standards in which we are used to, and they have definitely made a great improvement regarding their previous work. It is a big step of improvement and we are hoping for even bigger and greater things from them in the future.