“There’s still some people in the world that think there’s some good in the world,” says Joey Tempest in the spoken word passage at the start of “Nothing Can Follow This”. It sounds less like reassurance than something he’s trying desperately to believe.
That is the mood of Come This Madness. For anyone whose picture of Europe begins and ends with “The Final Countdown”, this might come as a surprise. Yet since returning from their long break, the band have made a habit of following their interests rather than revisiting their biggest hit. Their first album in nine years finds them looking straight at the world in 2026.
“One on One” opens almost like an overture. Someone has left, or gone away, and there’s darkness in the space they’ve left behind. The song also shows what more than 40 years together can bring: the whole band knows when to hold back and when to let John Norum take over with a phenomenal solo.
“The Cult of Ignorance” gets closer to the record’s wider concerns. “The ghost of evolution is coming after you,” Tempest sings, and the energy behind him makes it sound as though Europe have something urgent to say. The title track has an edge to its playing and perhaps a touch of Deep Purple, but its chorus still soars. “We’re all trying in our way to get home” is a line that could have been comforting. Here, with something ominous always lurking in the sound, it feels more uncertain. The band that was once “Heading For Venus” is shelving the idea. The contrast is clear.
“This Time of Year” is a genuinely upsetting ballad, searching for hope where it had all but disappeared. “In a Different World” follows, and of course it is a different world from the one in which Europe began. Few bands of their vintage have adapted to it this convincingly.
The classical opening of “Scandinavian Eyes” gives way to another song happy to acknowledge its debt to Deep Purple, while its cinematic sweep takes it somewhere else. “Takin’ It Back” is an impressive piece of modern hard rock, played with the unmistakable sense that the band enjoyed making it.
Mic Michaeli comes to the fore on “In the Absence of Grace”, a reminder of how integral his keyboards have always been to Europe’s sound. It’s short, sharp and contains one of the album’s most pointed lines: “When a clown moves into a castle he does not become a king.” “The Angels Must Have Flown” keeps that feeling of oppression close, before “The Devil’s Back” finds a groove that the whole band settles into perfectly.
Then comes “Nothing Can Follow This”. Bleak, theatrical and a little overblown, it finds two people facing the world together while Tempest tries to hold on to the possibility of good in it. Nothing really could follow it.
Since returning after a 13-year break, Europe have been a remarkably interesting band. Secret Society in 2006 and Last Look at Eden in 2009 were part of a run that showed they had no interest in simply rehashing the past. They haven’t settled for the bland, homogeneous records that some of their peers might have made, either. Nine years after their last album, there may be less hype around Come This Madness than its quality deserves, but you can hear the skill of a band still pushing itself. Darker than expected, and quite wonderful for it, this feels like the perfect Europe record for the maelstrom of 2026.
Rating: 9/10.
