Entertainment, Adam Lambert style

MANILA, Philippines—That the global reception for Adam Lambert’s debut album, “For Your Entertainment,” has been generally positive is unqualified deliverance for such an intense and divisive talent.

Rock ’n’ roll and dance club music have rarely sat well together, but with Lambert straddling fluently between two “opposite” roots, “For Your Entertainment” came out equal parts metal glam and electroclash dance in a seamless package that glitters with the kind of sparkle rarely found outside of “Twilight” the movie.

Lambert’s Filipino fans came in droves Sunday night at the Mall of Asia open grounds, where the 28-year-old singer-songwriter’s Glam Nation world tour made a stop. The same girls who screamed for “Twilight’s” Robert Pattinson gave it up for Lambert as well—amid pounding dance beats and clitoral guitar licks that haven’t been heard in these parts since Robert Fripp in David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” or Jimmy Page in “Communication Breakdown” eons ago.

“My band rocks!” Lambert screamed after making sure things were up to par on his watch with the pulse-taking question: “Manila, are you having fun?!!”

Sing-and-dance cycles

Lambert, master showman in top hat, coat tails and cane, plotted his repertoire this way: He escalated what was basically a one-album concert into four rock ’n’ roll sing-and-dance cycles, highlighted by “Whataya Want From Me?,” “Fever,” “Strut,” and “If I Had You” in that order, with ballads and slow numbers in between—in a kind of peaks and valleys of energy.

His patented vocal pyrotechnics and solemn modals strung the songs in one festive, sinuous set.

Opening cycle introduced the album with the title cut, complete with the aforementioned Broadway getup and dancers (“If I’m not a singer I’d be a dancer”), laser lights, big overhead display screens.

Before anybody could egg him on, Lambert obliged everyone by kissing his bassist, again, this time to wild cheers. The dance headliner “Strut” and the Lady-Gaga-penned “Fever” were obvious connections to the young and the now, and indeed brought the house down on cue.

For an hour and a half, Lambert spread his message of love, fun and self-expression.

Saved for last was the most melodically appealing track from the album, the pulsating dance floor romp, “If I Had You.” Too brief and too early in the night for the young to go home, Lambert obliged with an encore of his Idol signature rendition of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World.”