Label: Insideout Music
Release date: 8/27/2021
Production: Leprous
Album length: 56:04 min
Genre: Progressive Metal
Rating: 9.0/10
Leprous! The Norwegian prog rockers, who over more than two decades have slowly grown from a cult club attraction into one of the leading forces on today’s progressive metal and progressive rock scene, are back with a new album. It’s called “Aphelion.”
In astronomy, “aphelion” is the point on an orbit where a planet is farthest from the Sun, or from the star it circles. Slovenian even has its own word for it, “odsončje,” which in the heads of these Norwegian brilliant minds can be a synonym for all sorts of things, and in general for stringing together dark, gloomy musical landscapes, where Scandinavian musicians have, as the saying goes, always felt right at home!
“Aphelion” can be called the most polished, most fully realized, let’s just say the most mature album Leprous have made to date. The band isn’t standing still with it. They’re once again testing and presenting experimental feats, proving they carry and wield creative dynamite that keeps igniting with undiminished, inventive explosiveness, even if you can also look at this album as the band briefly glancing back at the roots of the musical path they’ve walked so far. It’s an exceptionally balanced album. On the level of the individual compositions, which pull hard away from one another in their lavish, experimental songwriting. That’s exactly what’s most appealing about Leprous. A story where you know what it’s going to be like, yet it catches you off guard again and again, and so pleasantly surprises.
They’re not as metal anymore, even though they remain metal. Or to put it another way: in its arrangement aesthetics, the new album meets moments inspired by the pop aesthetics of the eighties too. For references like that, Einar can always peek over at his countrymen A-HA. Everything is in its place. The album is a new chapter in the highly conciliatory buddying-up of lead motifs with sampling and programming structures (it’s no secret anymore that Leprous look up to Radiohead, among others), which again brings compositions where electronics step into the foreground (Silhouette).
Moments of noisy (metal-bristling) implosion are often deliberately “cut through” by organic, subtle passages, where Einar is accompanied, when needed, only by a classical piano. In these moments of stressing organic sonic pastels and confessional intimacy, Einar and his vocals, which are, superlatives aside, literally hard to describe, remain untouchable. With his vocal poise and delivery, Einar confirms that he counts as one of the best singers among the post-millennium progressive metal bands of the new generation, a group that Leprous, with their superior self-grown originality, have long belonged to as well. All of this is laid bare already in the opening, extremely dramatic Running Low, which on top of that poise in how things unfold is also seriously spiced up with neo-classical arrangements (added strings, a wind orchestra). The combination of string and wind arrangements turns up again later in The Shadow Side, and in the closer Nighttime Disguise.
Don’t worry. Even though the already proverbial development of the quirkiness of the guitar chords is once again tied to the development of the compositions as Einar mostly writes them on the piano, “Aphelion” still keeps that tantalizing edge, where Suhrke’s eight-string oar also produces a few heftier, trendy “djent” grenades, as hinted at in the album’s most exploratory and progressively most dynamic, “restless” track, the closing Nighttime Disguise.
Leprous still have an incredible sense for developing theatricality, and they don’t hide the bold and highly witty moves of their own blissfully creative ambition, constantly thrilling with an eclecticism that, as you listen, conjures up a moment of sweetly shocking unpredictability and shared moments of sweet surprise. With all of this, the band spoils its audience on the new album too, an audience teeming with hordes of the most demanding and spoiled listeners.
Baard Kolstad’s contribution is worth singling out. The drummer is an essential building block of the band’s unique musical character. Yet he’s often ignored when the conversation turns to the band’s musical achievements. Baard is a special breed, because with a fairly modest drum kit, especially for a “progressive” genre tag, he gets a huge amount done in the songs. This time his work comes to the fore more distinctly, especially in the many longer passages, and in whole songs too, where atmospheric parts dominate, floating on programmed sampling and synth blankets. Baard made fantastic use of the leaps between the leading rhythmic keys, as well as of “riddling” the available space inside the songs, and proved to be one of the biggest attractions of this album. You won’t easily find a snare drum this active in progressive metal and progressive rock. In Silent Revolution, Baard really gets to “work out” in a vivid way. He breaks rhythms brilliantly.
And Einar, after everything written up to this point in this essay, is certainly a chapter of his own. An incredibly accomplished musical artist. A vocalist who can sing anything and sing anywhere. Regardless of genre. Madrigals? Light as a feather. This time too his performance is stunning, and in itself a new peak in the band’s already rounded-out discography. In songs like Out Of Here, Einar shows just how piercingly he can crawl under your skin with his sentimentality. In the vocal tricks that adorn his confessional character, he is literally elusive and one of a kind. On the entire current world music scene. That’s why “Aphelion” can be enjoyed, among others, by the more serious listeners who otherwise swear by opera arias.
I won’t drag this out. The nature of the music of bands like Leprous is simply hard to describe rationally. Wherever you put a full stop, new, blank sheets of paper keep opening up. The music of “Aphelion” is like that too. Unique and elusive. Magical, mystical and instantly captivating. Challenging, daring, and, in all honesty, at once “hellish and fragile.” Indefinable. Freedom-loving. Truth-loving. Even though “Aphelion” can come across as an album where the band said the essence of its artistic vision a good while ago, it’s precisely thanks to all that distinctive originality and self-grown character that Leprous, even after 20 years of activity, remain one of the most interesting musical attractions around. With “Aphelion,” Leprous keep that boiling stance of artistic creativity in untouched, spotless magic, one that will fulfill and satisfy even the most spoiled music gourmets from within.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Running Low (6:30)
2. Out of Here (4:16)
3. Silhouette (3:45)
4. All the Moments (6:52)
5. Have You Ever? (4:42)
6. The Silent Revelation (5:45)
7. The Shadow Side (4:29)
8. On Hold (7:48)
9. Castaway Angels (4:53)
10. Nighttime Disguise (7:04)
Lineup:
Einar Solberg – vocals, keyboards, programming
Tor Oddmund Suhrke – guitar
Robin Ognedal – guitar
Simen Børven – bass guitar
Baard Kolstad – drums
Guest musicians:
Chris Baum – violin
Henriette Lindstad Børven – violin
Ellen Fjærvoll Samdal – violin
Karen Suhrke – cello
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – cello
Pål Gunnar Fiksdal – trumpet
Blåsemafian – wind orchestra
