Classic Rock
Silver Lining Music · 25 September 2026
“One on One” (3:41) starts with John Levén’s bass out in the open, and it is the first thing you hear on Come This Madness: a record that opens through the rhythm section rather than the keyboard, which was Europe’s calling card back in 1986. Eleven tracks, forty-one minutes, the band’s twelfth studio album and their first since Walk the Earth (2017), with the same five men: Joey Tempest, John Norum, John Levén, Mic Michaeli and Ian Haugland.
They cut it at RMV Studio in Stockholm with Tom Dalgety producing (Ghost, Rammstein, Royal Blood) and Mike Fraser, AC/DC’s house engineer, mixing. Dalgety also turns up among the writing credits on several tracks, and you can hear it in how tightly the thing is built: every song reaches its chorus fast and gets out without overstaying.
“The Cult of Ignorance” (3:31) is the quickest cut here and carries the most elaborate synth work, under a guitar happily doing its AC/DC impression. The title track (4:02) sits in Deep Purple territory, with Michaeli’s organ opening space above the band, and “This Time of Year” (4:05) is the piano-and-strings ballad Tempest could place in his sleep. “Scandinavian Eyes” (4:51), the longest track and the third single, is the only one allowed to build in layers; the lyrics across the record deal with artificial intelligence and political division, which is not this band’s usual ground.
Nine years of waiting resolve in forty-one minutes with nothing longer than 4:51, and the back half pays for it: “Takin’ It Back” (3:46), “The Angels Must Have Flown” (3:45) and “The Devil’s Back” (3:47) trace the same curve three times in a row, on the same clock. The only thing that breaks the format is “In the Absence of Grace” (1:28), a ninety-second instrumental hinge between the two halves. A record with a guitarist like Norum and a keyboard player like Michaeli never quite lets either of them off the leash.
Eleven tracks, forty-one minutes and nineteen seconds, out on Silver Lining Music on 25 September. Three singles came first: “One on One” on 28 April, “The Cult of Ignorance” on 3 June and “Scandinavian Eyes” on 1 September.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Enric Vilaplana