‘I’m done pleasing the crowds,’ croons Leprous frontman and chief songwriter Einar Solberg on Silently Walking Home, the opening track on Melodies Of Atonement. Which is surprising, as it wasn’t apparent that he had been.
Even in progressive circles there are those who would prefer a band to carry out variations on a theme for the rest of their career and there are plenty who yearn for a return to Leprous’s earlier work – pre-2017’s Malina, essentially – when they could still be accurately described as a prog metal band.
Solberg’s pre-release chatter around this album will be music to those people’s ears. It’s being trumpeted as the heaviest thing they’ve made in some time. At the same time, like some of his peers – Riverside’s Mariusz Duda among them – the Leprous man seems to push back against the ‘p’ word these days. “I’m not sure it’s very prog,” he says of the record.
It sounds like an attempt at distancing the band from the scene that’s supported them, ignoring the fact that the engine which drives most modern prog is experimentation and a desire to carve out new sonic paths rather than week-long solos and capes.
Melodies Of Atonement is certainly not a return to the labyrinthine compositions of 2011’s Bilateral or 2013’s Coal. It’s still shaped by crystalline melodies and the flawlessly expressive vocals that have come to be an increasingly defining factor over the past few years.
Granted, it simplifies the equation to some extent, presenting the essential elements of the band in a more direct and stripped-down manner than they’ve done before, but it’s still recognisable as a Leprous record, forward-looking sensibilities and all.
The most obvious difference is the absence of the symphonic sweeps and strings that augmented 2019’s Pitfalls and 2021’s Aphelion, with Solberg having indicated he’s saving the cinematic soundscapes for the solo career he launched with last year’s mesmerising 16.
There’s far less playing around with unconventional time signatures, but that doesn’t mean everything is entirely straightforward
Melodies Of Atonement might be the most accessible and streamlined thing the Norwegians have put out to date, but they’ve hardly turned into a garage rock band. There are shining hooks and pneumatic riffs aplenty, built into meticulous crafted songs with ever-shifting textures and frequent flourishes of invention.
Silently Walking Home kicks things off in unconventional fashion, riding a warped beat and atonal slashes of guitar through big swathes of melody. Its juxtaposition of the jarring and the soothing that ends on a bed of heavenly tones.
Atonement boasts some of those much-vaunted heavier moments, entering via skittering electronic beats, with Solberg whisper-singing until an insistently repetitive guitar lick muscles into the frame. There’s still an ebb and flow at play, but this is as punchy and direct as they get.
My Specter continues in a similar vein: Solberg hits some incredible highs over chirping synths and unsteady rhythms. There’s far less playing around with unconventional time signatures on this album, but that doesn’t mean everything is entirely straightforward. Tightly-compressed riffs are deployed like naval mines beneath delicate vocals and it builds towards a swell of Muse-esque bombast before flowing out in a trickle.
Like A Sunken Ship contains the most metallic moments they’ve exhibited in a long time, but even here the aggression is entirely measured, with screams tempered by sing-song ‘la la la’ melodies and gently receding waves of keys and guitars.
Despite Solberg’s claims to the contrary, Leprous are a modern prog band, but one who – like fellow travellers Opeth – retain the muscle memory needed to strategically place the occasional heavier element for counterpoint effect.
Elsewhere, Faceless is the closest to a big pop song they’ve produced yet, sliding from a smoky 4am sigh into an unashamedly huge hook underpinned by equally brazen hard rock dynamics. Starlight is slow, textured and appropriately glimmering.
Self-Satisfied Lullaby places slow melodies and fragile vocal harmonies atop a layer of meticulous rhythms seeded with the occasional misplaced electronic bloops. As with the opener, these entirely intentional imperfections only serve to highlight the delicate beauty of the whole.
Leprous have made a slight change by omission: trimming some of the more extraneous elements away. It might be their most accessible album to date, but it retains much of the subtlety, invention and craftmanship they’ve come to be known for. And for all the talk of throwing the prog baby out with the bathwater, when it comes to a sense of experimentation and fearless exploration, Leprous still bring it in spades.
Melodies Of Atonement is on sale now via InsideOut.
