A 'Glorious Collision' of melody and complexity

When Evergrey frontman Tom S. Englund croons “We are liars and vultures, rapists of the weak” on “To Fit the Mold” from “Glorious Collision,” it sounds like he’s singing not just for himself and his bandmates but for the entire world. More impressively, we’re inclined to agree with him.

Such is the power that an unearthly baritone grants a man. By the time the song’s chorus rolls around, Englund draws us closer to his perspective with some well-placed poignancy: “We’re scared we’ll amount to nothing, and we change to fit the mold.” He speaks for us, but we’ll allow it because he’s so right.

Of course, this is not atypical of an Evergrey song. More than most metal lyricists, Englund focuses on communicating emotion through his words. This is a band that wrote a concept record about a man who joins a religious cult that condones child molestation (2004’s “The Inner Circle”), so it knows a thing or two about the most painful aspects of the human experience.

This is also a band that covered pop singer and fellow Swede Dilba for one of its biggest hits, 2003’s “I’m Sorry,” so it knows a thing or two about melody, as well. Were they not so sonically distorted and lyrically tragic, the album’s opening one-two punch of “Leave It Behind Us” and “You” would be staples of rock radio. More than just Englund’s powerful voice drives these songs; it’s the combination of that voice with his expert guitar work and the ever-present keys of longtime ivory-tickler Rickard Zander. The second guitarist, bassist and drummer are all new to the band, but the integrity of the Evergrey sound is strong enough that it sounds as though they’ve been there since the beginning.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of Evergrey’s modus operandi is its ability to integrate an intuitive knack for melody into relatively complicated song structures. Indeed, the finest moments of “Glorious Collision” come in its most varied songs: the aforementioned “To Fit the Mold,” album closer “... and the Distance,” and what may be the best song the band has ever written, “The Phantom Letters.”

These songs take everything Evergrey is great at — tunefulness, pathos, complexity — and put them together in a way that’s not forced but logical. They’re so convincing that even as Tom S. Englund calls humanity out for its ugliness, he puts his hand on its shoulders and convinces it that everything is going to be alright.

Here’s hoping he’s not wrong.