First Impressions
This is the album I've been waiting for. THIS is where the gold is at, or should I say diamonds??
Yeah, there is very little flowery language I can use here, this album is a complete and utter masterpiece in almost every way. It is by far the best thing I have heard from Leprous up to this point and it's not even a contest.
I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's packed with pretty much everything I love in a progressive record.
There are two kinds of amazing albums, if you ask me. The kind that have nonstop bangers through and through, something like Powerslave, or Images and Words. And the kind that engulf you in their sound and make the listening experience an incredible and complete journey that always feels compelling to listen to in their entirety, think Metropolis Pt, 2 or Frances The Mute.
This is the second kind.
I have listened to this album in it's entirety so many times and it goes by so quickly every time. It engulfs you in this incredibly dark and heavy atmosphere that is somehow still extremely Leprous sounding.
That's something I really want to emphasize. While this is a much more traditional prog record than their modern material, I can actually hear A LOT of their modern sound in here. They still take so much time to build up songs.
They play with tension in every single song, and sometimes it's not even released. The songs have strange structures, and will often have very long sections of developing soundscapes where not much is happening, but somehow they make it work.
I have to go track by track in this one, I can't do it any other way.
Foe is a perfect way to open this album. It encapsulates everything it is. You have a more traditional and proggy sound, with some incredibly heavy and oppressive production that even the high strings of the guitar sound brutal.
But we still spend about half the song with Einar's falsetto vocalizations, and kind of floating in a blanket of sound that varies rhythmically and has a lot of layers and synthesizers. It's an incredible unique sound that again, I thought they'd developed much later on, but no it was here really early on.
We get a proper banger with Chronic. The weird melodies in the verse were a little off-putting at first for me, but once you get more familiar with them, they sound super dark and creepy, which fits the much darker tone of the song. Speaking of dark, that riff in the middle of the song? Properly brutal. They way they make you wait for the drop is just amazing, and it HITS so damn hard.
The title track is absolute insanity. The main riff is like nothing I've heard before. In theory, it's kind of stupid simple. Just chugging on the low strings with some tremolo picking at the end, but my goodness it is just perfect. The contrast between the super slow chugs vs the insanity of the tail end of the riff is incredible. Add this to an irregular measure and solid stable drums, it almost feels like a riff Messhugah would write.
The Cloak took quite a while to grow on me. It's one of two slower and lighter tracks in here. It honestly reminds me so much of their modern songs. It's got a similar build with the chorus getting more and more intense with each repetition of it.
There are so many details surrounding it that make it an extremely lush and beautiful experience. But it's much more heavy, less subtle and detail oriented but it still builds up to an incredibly rewarding climax. The chorus melody is everything in this track.
And now, as is tradition, the later half is where things go absolute haywire. This last run of tracks is so good that I don't even know how to tackle them without writing an entire review for each song here.
The Valley is incredible. Everything about it is carefully crafted perfection if you ask me. Once again, we have a track that is much like their modern songs, a very long and building song with an especially long middle section where you're simply floating in a cloud of sound. But it's just got everything down to a science.
The verse builds perfectly to the first chorus. And the chorus straight up one of my favorite choruses ever at this point. It's such a good melody juxtaposed with a kickass and super impactful rhythm from the guitars and drums.
And then we wait a long, and I mean long time to hear it again. The bridge can be a little much, but they way they wrote it is just... I don't know what it has, but with all the amazing clear and lush productions they've made in modern times, this remains one of the most hypnotic sections in their entire discography.
I will admit, there is a small blemish here, and that is Salt.
I do not dislike Salt, but compared to everything else here, I felt it was a somewhat unnecessary detour from the quality the album had been building up. It's not bad by any means, actually it's still a pretty good song. I just think it's a little too slow and the melodies are not as strong compared to, say, The Cloak.
But after that, we get Echo. This song is, once again, amazing in pretty much any sense I can think of. And the thing it, compared to everything else in this album, it's by far the most subdued and subtle song in here.
It's got no crazy technical moments, no insane vocals, not even the super quick and complex play with rhythms that I'm used to hearing from them. And despite this, it's my second favorite song of the album. It simply sounds so big and final, but it also sounds a little uplifting. Like you've been in this incredibly dark atmospheric place the entirety of the album's length. And suddenly you're lifted up into space to just float there.
The highlight of the song is without a doubt the bass. Never since Porcupine Tree have I heard one do so little in a song and yet completely steal the show. The tone they chose for this song is absolutely perfect. It's genuinely entrancing, and they very slight rhythm off set in the long bridge section just makes it so addicting to listen to.
And to top it all off, you have that little fill/solo just before the final round of choruses start, which is so damn good I've replayed it several times while listening to the song. I almost never do that.
Wow, what an incredible way to end the album. I really couldn't think of a better climax-
SIKE THATS NOT THE END OF THE ALBUM
Out of nowhere, and I mean completely out of NOWHERE, we get one of the most insane and heaviest endings to an album I've ever heard in my life. Contaminate Me hits me like a truck every single time it comes on. This song is the opposite of every single principle I know Leprous to hold. There is no subtlety, no holding back, no tension and release. This song is a 9 minute explosion.
The highlight here is an indication of why this song feels so out of left field, a guest vocalists. It seems they have a pretty close connection with Ihsahn, since he is Einar's brother in law. I don't think I have ever heard someone scream like he does. It's definitely a style of scream vocals I've heard before, but the way he does it sounds like it's actually painful. I don't know what he does, but he sounds like the personification of agony.
The borderline pig squeals at one point of the song absolutely got me. And then he follows that with like, actual singing while still in his harsh voice?? I have to check out some of his stuff because he is incredible here.
And Einar doesn't slack either. His verses sound the most operatic he's ever sounded, and then he hits a super intense scream near the halfway point of the song. Literally everyone is at 11 here. The riffs are insane, the drums are ridiculous, and the vocals are just so brutal.
WELL. I had a lot to say about this one, didn't I? Like I said, this is the album I've been waiting for, hoping that this band had in them. It's genuinely incredible.
Ranking
Contaminate Me
Echo
The Valley
Coal
Chronic
The Cloak
Foe
Salt
Score
9.5/10
Leprous review