Leprous – Coal

I really do miss the name 'the pretentious nobody', I wish that name would hover above to constantly remind myself how pathetic my promises were. When I started out this blog I was pretentious enough to think that I would be able to write one article per week. I was delusional but tenacious enough to force myself to adhere to that promise I made and guess what ? I was fairly successful, it had to snap somewhere and it did last week. Priorities came begging for answers and procrastination became my friend, "tomorrow is the day" became the life's motto and that 'tomorrow' never came. There was however a silver lining, the In Absentia artwork adorned the blog for two weeks and that album do deserve two weeks of attention and for your jaded eyes I've made the artwork transition less jarring, blue became black and the paranoid face became a diamond skull. This bold and vaguely oppressive artwork emblazons the album Coal by the Norwegian progressive metal band Leprous.

The words Norway and metal has connotations of some nefarious events, add the word 'black' to complete the picture. In the early 1990's some Norwegian youths took the sound and lyrics of Venom and Bathory a bit too seriously, fueling their vitriol against organized religion and burning churches to send their point across. The second wave of black metal became more than a genre, it was their medium of hate, the pinnacle of rebellion and an escape to the primitive ways of yore. The youths grew in body and insight, they realized the fallacy of teenage wisdom and the limitations of black metal. Emperor released an album with the label "Emperor performs Sophisticated Black Metal Art exclusively"  and soon black metal became an all encompassing art form, their leader and the black metal second wave's most forward thinking musician Ihsahn broke up and broke away from Emperor and went solo. He needed a backing band and in came Leprous.

Leprous didn't have anything to do with the Norwegian black metal scene, they are not black metal by any stretch however Ihsahn's blessings helped them in gaining the recognition they deserve. Their 2011 release Bilateral was an excellent record, one of the most original and enjoyable albums I've heard in the progressive metal genre. The record was fun and colorful, for the most part it sounded like a band jamming out and having a good time. Coal is darker, it is bleak but strangely inviting and the Ihsahn influence is more than ever, Ihsahn released Das Seelenbrechen four months later and both the records casts shadows on each other.

We live in a post Nothing era, when Meshuggah dropped that time twisting masterpiece in the year 2002, poly-rhythms and syncopated chugs on a 7 string guitar became the arsenal for a modern progressive metal band. Leprous is very much a modern band and they do have those traits but they are from Norway, they have this Scandinavian melancholy in their blood and hence their music can touch souls despite a seemingly cold framework. Coal is not an easy listen and for some reason I find it as disturbing as the last Dodecahedron release, the later unnerves through dissonance and its extremity while Coal does the same though its songwriting approach. Foe lets you know what to expect with an odd drum pattern in 7/4 repeated throughout the song, that time signature in itself create a jarring mechanical like quality and then you have Einar Solberg's vocals floating above.

Repetition is one of the compositional tools that musicians use, in the wrong hands it can lead to utter boredom but when it is used well nothing can be more potent and this record is a perfect example. Chronic features a groovy distorted guitar riff that lasts almost two minutes with other instruments layering it up as the song moves on and the song's chorus repeats itself over and over in its last two minutes with the instrumentation becoming more and more chaotic. The song The Valley does its entire midsection on a syncopated djent riff and it becomes almost drone like when it gets coupled with Solberg's vocalizations with the vowel 'a'. The Valley goes into ethereal realms with the words

"visibly frail

easy to see

how to prevail

still there it lies

in rivers thin

down in disguise

in my valley within"

Einar Solberg's vocals often serves as an another instrument and his emotive singing and vocalizations elevates the compositions to be something more than just a set of ideas. The vocals often "riffs" along with the instruments, in the song Echo we can hear Einar singing over his own vocalized melody. The Cloak is the shortest song on the record and it is a strong contender for the title 'song of the decade', you may think I've gone too far with this encomium, hear the song yourself and you will know. The song is four minutes of perfection, the tense build and the final explosion releases emotions that are out of this world, it's breathtaking, ecstatic and sublime, again don't take my word, hear it.

Ihsahn guests on the last song Contaminate Me, the heaviest song on the record and he gives probably his best harsh vocal performance including that sick scream at 1:30 mark. The songs goes almost to a stop around half way mark giving way to an ambient section with industrial noises, violins and cymbal flourishes with Ihsahn going full Shining mode with some agonizing screams.   

Leprous went on to release two more records after this but they don't come close to the heights of Coal and Bilateral however they are now a popular band and are no longer under Ihsahn's shadow. Their latest record Malina was more progressive rock than progressive metal but then you don't expect a band like Leprous to make the same record twice, still an occasional foray in to heavy waters would have pleased the fanboy in me. 

Coal was a difficult listen for me and it still is but that is the reason why I love this record. The songs keep you in disquietude but you will stay till the end for the diamonds spilled on the coal, after all thats what the artwork says.

LINKS FOR YOUR ENLIGHTMENT

Leprous   Emperor   Ihsahn   Dodecahedron   Meshuggah

Progressive Metal   Djent