Performers: Leprous / Monuments / Kalandra
Venue: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Date: Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Leprous, those brilliant prog-metal oddballs, returned to Ljubljana on the last day of February this year to play a new show in the Slovenian capital. And what a show it was. Almost ten years after their late October 2013 gig at Orto bar — where they entertained a handful of progressive metal connoisseurs — they genuinely packed out the Kino Šiška venue this time.
The band, active for a good two decades, released eight studio albums between 2009 and 2021. Across them they’ve shown extraordinary artistic curiosity, and in a solid decade of that kind of creativity they’ve climbed to the very top of the most interesting and distinctive acts in contemporary progressive metal — and progressive rock too. In a word: eclecticism is not something they lack.
The band arrived in Ljubljana with their current studio album “Aphelion” (2021, RockLine review) tucked in their pocket — an album released two years ago, at a time when live touring was, sadly, a global impossibility. More than half the set was drawn from “Pitfalls” and “Aphelion”, which only showed just how much passion the band brought to this tour presenting the music they’ve been making in recent years. Both albums are also stylistically closer to each other than either is to the older (and in every way excellent) material.
Kalandra opened the evening. The Norwegian-Swedish rockers weave traditional Nordic-Celtic melody into their own brand of art-folk. Kalandra means “calendar” in Slovenian — pretty close to the Norwegian word, isn’t it? A musical story that’ll resonate with fans of artists like Aurora, London Grammar, Sleeping at Last, and Wardruna. Through their cover of Wardruna’s Helvegen, Kalandra helped spread their name. In a good half hour the band completely won over the room — above all thanks to the enchanting vocals of singer Katrine Stenbekk and a repeatedly esoteric, almost transcendental sonic backdrop conjured by Jogeir Daae Mæland (guitar), Florian Bernhard Döderlein Winter (guitar), and drummer Oskar Johnsen Rydh. Dramatic, mystical, and deeply satisfying — with a compelling atmospheric build. The band, now ten years into their career, showcased their debut “The Line” (2020) in Ljubljana, coming across as tight, cohesive, soft, and sensual. Mid-set, the instrumental Goat Horn Jam only underscored all of that. The band took a real round of applause at the end, having genuinely surprised even those who hadn’t known them (well) before walking into Kino Šiška. The band uses no bass guitar, but their two guitarists pull out plenty of tricks — including the violin bow.
Monuments, the British metalcore quintet, brought an entirely different energy to the stage! A different story altogether. The modern progressive-metal world they inhabit — built around the exceptional playing of former Fellsilent guitarist John Browne — pulled the front rows especially, drawing in everyone looking for more riff-driven destruction combined with the screaming intensity that Monuments vocalist Andy Cizek delivers. The technical complexity that puts Monuments at the cutting edge of new-wave bands loaded with djent and mathcore moves — where jazz content packaged in metal is never hard to spot — was breathtaking at moments. Between the polyrhythmic excesses, Browne’s extreme guitar speed, and the overall sense that the quartet is pulling all this off with effortless ease — to caricature it: amid all the jaw-dropping madness every member can somehow still find a free hand to sip a coffee — the whole thing borders on the perverse. In the best possible way. It’s staggering how far musical-technical obsession can go these days. The shift from quintet to quartet (here’s hoping they won’t keep reshuffling so frequently going forward — read: keeping up with Browne is no easy feat) barely registers on stage. The sonic coverage remains unwavering. Forty minutes of collective workout — amid all the neck-breaking onslaughts — was closed out by the excellent new track The Cimmerians from their current album “In Stasis”, with a jazzy clean guitar intro that Browne could easily have stretched a little longer. But time was up. The band, at their artistic extreme, delivered a bombastically top-notch show.
Leprous! First off (first off? — we’re already in the third leg of this report) we need to flag the turnout. Šiška was packed. Not quite sold out, but not far off. Leprous — who played Orto bar in 2013 and later hit Metaldays too (unforgettable was that meeting with the band at 5 p.m. under the blazing sun on July 23, 2018, when the band was wringing sweat out of their grey long-sleeved shirts) — confirmed they’re growing. Not just artistically. But also in crowd numbers. Masses. On a global scale. Hearing English spoken at both bars was a completely normal occurrence that evening, which confirmed that a lot of people had made the trip to this Ljubljana show from abroad. Even just four years ago, when we caught Leprous — also in February, at the Explosiv club in Graz — nobody would have dared imagine the band would achieve any kind of breakthrough in terms of broader popularity. Maybe the global streaming of those lockdown concert series from their home town of Notodden in 2021 played a part.
So the band leaned heavily on their last two albums. Einar Solberg, as expected, stunned with a vocal performance that’s almost without peer. He’s in the stratosphere throughout — extreme registers, rarely anything resembling normal. The vocal technique is extraordinary, and Einar is definitively the central element whose vocal characteristics give Leprous the unmistakable pedigree of an artistic one-of-a-kind. The quintet (plus touring member and cellist Raphael Weinroth-Brown) dazzled with their performance. Perfection and razor-sharp tightness across all the compositional twists — the theatrical drift through calm (almost dreamlike) passages interrupted by adrenaline-rush bursts from the heavier (riff-driven) sections — delivered a brilliant concert experience. This was quietly expected. But until you actually experience it live and feel it for yourself, the curiosity just won’t leave you alone.
What’s fascinating about Leprous is that all the members essentially play all the instruments. These highly trained and educated musicians were constantly rotating away from their primary instruments to the keyboards — a domain that notably included vocalist Einar Solberg and the strikingly agile, hyperactive cellist Raphael Weinroth-Brown. What’s remarkable to watch is that they never miss a beat. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do at any given point in the evening. And all the while the instrumentalists have to keep their eyes on an animated Solberg, who makes full use of the stage by striding left and right — so nobody gets knocked over.
Halfway through, Solberg put four tracks to a crowd vote: Running Low, Angel, Alleviate, and Forced Entry. The last two ended up neck and neck. Unable to decide, Solberg threw an object into the crowd (a crumpled piece of paper, it seemed). Whoever caught it had to call the result between the two songs. Forced Entry won — to the particular delight of everyone who swears by the band’s earlier, more heavily distortion-laden era. As a bonus, their second studio album “Bilateral” (2011) got at least one track some live attention. If there’s a single (minor) negative to find across the whole evening, it’s that they didn’t play a few more older tracks — from the 2009–2015 era. But those are minor quibbles.
The band closed the main set in stunning fashion with the excellent Nighttime Disguise (“Aphelion”), then returned for the obligatory encore with the dark and distinctly atmospheric The Sky Is Red (“Pitfalls”) — which one final time held the crowd completely in its grip, leaving everyone in a state of hypnosis they had no desire to break out of. The feelings it left were deeply imprinted. Leprous simply move you. With their genre-melting pot they are the very definition of musical perfection, placing them in a uniquely singular spot in the progressive metal landscape. With the passion and fire of this concert brilliance on display in Ljubljana, it’ll be fascinating to watch how far their global conquest of music fans goes. When Solberg asked mid-show, “How many of you saw us at Orto bar?” — maybe two people raised their hands. When he pushed further, word came back that more people had seen the band at Metaldays. The turnout at Šiška in 2023 only confirmed what’s now more than obvious: Leprous are growing in popularity. And they’ve achieved it through natural evolution — through the sheer stubbornness of their unique musical vision, which is ultimately the greatest thing any artist can give and offer.
Text: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik & Edita Klemen (nos. 14, 23 & 44-48)
Kalandra setlist:
1. Borders
2. Slow Motion
3. Naive
4. Virkelighetens Etterklang
5. Goat horn jam
6. Ensom
7. Brave New World
Monuments setlist:
1. I, the Creator
2. Opiate
3. Leviathan
4. Empty Vessels Make The Most Noise
5. Cardinal Red
6. False Providence
7. Lavos
8. The Cimmerian
Leprous setlist:
1. Have You Ever?
2. The Price
3. Illuminate
4. Observe the Train
5. On Hold
6. Castaway Angels
7. From the Flame
8. Forced Entry (chosen by audience vote from three options: Running Low, Angel, Alleviate)
9. Out of Here
10. Slave
11. Distant Bells
12. Below
13. Nighttime Disguise
—encore—
14. The Sky Is Red
