(Andy Synn continues his on/off love affair with Leprous, whose new album comes out 30 August)
Being “heavy” is not the same as being “good”. We all know that, right?
But I must admit, as someone who first fell in love with Leprous back when they were still serving as Ihsahn‘s backing band, and who still believes that Bilateral is one of the best and most unique albums of the new millennium, I was certainly excited by the announcement that Melodies of Atonement was going to showcase a “heavier” side of the group than what we’d seen/heard in recent years.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve continued to be a fan (to a greater or lesser extent) of the band’s output – Coal and Malina are also still firm favourites, and there’s some great tracks on The Congregation, Pitfalls (including the outstanding “The Sky Is Red”), and Aphelion (whose cinematic highs more than make up for the record’s occasional lows) – but the idea that they might be bringing back some of the edginess and punchiness of their earlier work(s) certainly had me intrigued.
Of course, as any sensible person might have predicted, MoA isn’t just Bilateral, Part 2 – there’s some moments here that probably deserve that comparison, but overall the two albums really share only the most basic musical markers, enough to tell that they’re related but probably not enough to make them genetically compatible – as the Leprous of today is quite literally not the same band they used to be.
Even so, however, I can tell you now that the group weren’t lying when they said that this would be a “heavier” album… even if the story is a little more complicated than that.
Don’t get me wrong, the booming, low-end guitars which make such an impact on tracks like outstanding opener “Silently Walking Alone” and “I Hear the Sirens” certainly play a big role in making Melodies of Atonement the “heaviest” Leprous album for quite some time – providing as they do an almost doomy weight that’s more about tone and texture than technicality – but there’s more to it than the band simply cranking up and tuning down.
No, what really makes this album “heavier”, in its own distinctive way, is it’s overall darker and more sombre approach, which is just as – if not even more – apparent in the haunted synthscapes underpinning the likes of “Atonement” and previously mentioned opener “Silently Walking Alone” as it is in the distinctly more morose and melancholy vibe of the vocal melodies found on songs such as “My Specter” and “I Hear the Sirens”.
At the same time, however, there’s a brooding, anxious energy to the album – thus far at least – which makes those pre-release references to Bilateral make a little more sense, with the twitchy guitar motif of “Atonement” and the absolutely massive second half of “Like A Sunken Ship” (featuring an unexpected burst of histrionic harsh vocals of the sort we haven’t heard from frontman Einar Solberg in quite some time), for example, both helping to balance the record’s gloomier aspect with some welcome touches of bombastic weirdness.
The more attentive of you, of course, may have noticed that I’ve only mentioned the album’s first five songs so far… and the reason for that is that there is, to my ears at least, a noticeable drop-off after the aforementioned “Like A Sunken Ship” (which is definitely one of the record’s major highlights), with the more sullen second half of the record (especially “Limbo” and “Starlight”, both of which feel a little too drawn-out and lacking in direction, despite some attention-grabbing guitar work towards the end of the latter and some predictably awesome drumming from Baard Kolstad throughout both) rarely reaching the heights of that opening quintet of killer cuts.
The one major exception, however – which is not to say there’s any truly bad songs here, to be clear (“Self Satisfied Lullaby” in particular is a real grower) – is seven minute seventh track “Faceless”, which is right up there (along with “Silently Walking Alone” and “Like A Sunken Ship”) with the band’s best work, morphing as it does from a moody, subtly jazzy, bass and piano driven slow-burn into a series of gargantuan Prog-Metal grooves which, in turn, build towards an outlandishly, and unashamedly, epic conclusion.
Sure, Leprous‘s eighth album may not be perfect, and it’s likely that some of the group’s more recently-acquired fans, perhaps used to a somewhat “poppier” style, may find this one a bit more demanding and a little harder to love (which seems very much on purpose, to be clear), but I have to admire the band’s ongoing commitment to following their creative compulsions wherever they lead… even if that means potentially alienating at least some of their audience every time around.
But as long as they keep doing what they do so well Leprous will continue to have nothing to atone for.