Album Review: Leprous - Aphelion

Leprous is one of the few progressive bands that is actually progressive. They keep shifting and changing their sound, refusing to sit still and give the fans more of what they want. In that respect, I admire their attitude towards making music. On the other hand, I have been completely confused by the poing of their last couple of albums, where they have adopted a cold and synthetic sound that is not inviting, and has led to songs which no obvious appeal. In their search for artistry, they have lost the plot when it comes to songwriting.

That is still the case here, as "Running Low" opens the album without a care for writing a decent song. It spends the first few minutes cycling through the same weak melodic line in various ways, and when the heavier cathartic section finally does come along, they repeat the same line over and over, again showing no skill whatsoever. They are beating a dead horse at that point, and the horse is the lucky one in this scenario.

"Out Of Here" starts out as almost chamber-pop, with the music barely rising above a whisper. The vocals croon another flat melody, and there is nothing to the instrumentation to even notice until halfway through the song. Einar does some high vocals runs in the heavier section, but they sound more like warm-up exercises than composed melodies, and I am not entertained in the slightest by them. He's trying to be dramatic, but there is no drama to the music. It's sort of like someone ripping their heart out and writing in blood, only what they've written is the instruction manual for a coffee maker.

This is what Leprous has been doing for several albums now. Einar and the band sound detached from one another at times, as if they are playing and singing different songs. The band is still playing mechanical prog metal, when they're allowed to play at all, while he is singing as if he is on a theater stage trying to emote to the back row. The two simply don't go together, and both look worse for it.

Albums don't need to be up-tempo all the time, but they do need to have some sort of energy to carry us through them, and Leprous once again comes up short. The proclivity for slow, soft moments takes over too often, with the songs spending minutes at a time barely crawling until an unsatisfying release. There is so much waiting involved for something, for anything to happen, that nothing the band does at that point could ever be good enough to calm the frustration.

After a while, I'm left with the impression that what they are actually going for it something like the sound of Phil Collins' hits of the 80s. "In The Air Tonight" would fit the tone of this record, and would also put it to shame, since that song is actually good. There isn't anything on this record that has a drum fill, let alone a guitar riff or a vocal melody, that is memorable in the least. Listening to "Aphelion" was like running a Brillo through my head. Any remnants of this album were scrubbed right off and completely forgotten.

So yes, Leprous is still making confoundingly bad albums. My biggest question is why metal fans still like them.