Label: AFM Records
Release date: January 25, 2019
Production: Jacob Hansen
Album length: 54.07 min.
Genre: Progressive Metal
Evergrey are long-running Swedish progressive metallers from Gothenburg. Over 24 years they’ve developed a style all their own, one that has pulled in a loyal base of fans who follow their every musical move with real devotion. Evergrey is really embodied by Tom S. Englund: outstanding singer, composer, arranger, guitarist of course, and the main driving engine and unshakable visionary.
Evergrey have been together in the current lineup for more than eight years, and in that time they’ve grown into an incredibly polished, razor-sharp musical gem, an entity that has a hard time making a record anyone could argue needs improving.
After two excellent albums, “Hymns for the Broken” (2014) and “The Storm Within” (2016), both truly top-notch, the question was whether Evergrey could hold on to that incredible creative streak and carry it over to a new record. The answer comes in the form of the band’s ninth album overall, “The Atlantic”, which ties them to the solid German label AFM Records. And the answer is a resounding yes.
The Atlantic is the third part of a conceptual story that began on “Hymns for the Broken”, about all the inner battles of an individual with every demon trying to knock you off your path toward the light and toward reaching ultimate personal nirvana. The bitterness of friendships falling apart, a pile of other personal armageddons,… in short, “The Atlantic” is the grand finale of this trilogy, which brings the individual in the end to a state of inner peace and reconciliation with the world. Though keeping the ego on a leash remains an ever-open challenge for each and every one of us.
On the new album Evergrey hold on to their dark nature. Their unmistakable depression and melancholy and gloom. The Scandinavian recipe for melancholy is ravenous. It’s bitter, yet loaded with the “sweetness” of incredibly supple compositional musicality and a wealth of mood-driven grip, which sucks you straight into the band’s unique world of musical philosophy and their expressive, utterly their own musical character.
The songs are honed down to the last detail, and the feeling that we’re talking about a progressive band, interestingly, with Evergrey keeps stepping into the background again and again. Tom S. Englund has once more come up with some incredible musical ideas in which he develops the optimum of his vocal output. Both in stringing together gripping, real emotions, bubbling passions,.. An album full of bittersweet feeling that takes hold of you instantly. The choruses steal the spotlight from one another, and what’s interesting about Evergrey is that the atmospheric crescendo lives in the chorus melodies and not in some slam-bang escapades of prog-metal assaults where the band would show off the technical chops of individual members. Most of the songs are mid-tempo and a mild doomy touch is noticeable. It teases just right and exactly as much as it has to, so the album is truly as depressive as can be and the band, as its name hints, is “forever gray”.
Just one gripe. The third track, All I Have, could have been two and a half minutes shorter, since with the multiple repeats of an awfully predictable chorus Evergrey get mildly annoying, even though the chorus melody is cut along a distinctly harmonic line that once again sells incredible catchiness and musical grip. Still, other points on the album develop considerably better and especially convincingly in this respect, namely the punchy opener A Silent Arc and above all, right after it, Weightless, a textbook example of combining orthodox metal punch with polished musicality. Those two are easily joined further on, especially in the second half of the album, by Currents, End of Silence and Departure. But as I said, I’m doing the songs I haven’t named a bit of an injustice, because there’s no weak spot on this record, no track you could add anything to or take anything away from in reaching the peak of expression. “The Atlantic” grabs you from start to finish and keeps you in a special bittersweet hypnosis of aching emotion. Production to match, excellent, fully contrasted. A massive, down-tuned wall of sound of impenetrable metal phrases, deft keyboard arrangements that boost the dramatic and dark mood, dynamic rhythmic structures that also make for the band’s full-blooded progressive metal dossier (which peaks right in the closing The Ocean). Everything is in its place, just as it should be, and “The Atlantic” counts as one of the most robust and convincing studio releases in the progressive metal genre for 2019. I can confirm that firmly and declare it with a perfectly clear conscience right now, even though we’ve barely stepped into 2019.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 9.0 / 10
Track list:
01. A Silent Arc
02. Weightless
03. All I Have
04. A Secret Atlantis
05. The Tidal
06. End Of Silence
07. Currents
08. Departure
09. The Beacon
10. This Ocean
Line-up:
Tom S. Englund – vocals, guitar
Henrik Danhage – guitar
Rikard Zander – keyboards
Johan Niemann – bass
Jonas Ekdahl – drums
