And actually let me post the next one to keep the discussion going. Fogey followers, you may want to skip this installment, which would probably be a good call.
#13
The Congregation
Leprous
Genre: progressive metal
2015
Recommended to me by: Tomislav and DTF band thread
They say three is a magic number, and it certainly seems important enough at least when my enjoyment of a popular band on DTF is concerned. Like with Circus Maximus, I only managed to get into Leprous on a third try. The first one was with
Forced Entry, which didn’t succeed, and I’ll get into the details a bit later for that; then I received
The Price in my first roulette, which was indeed quite decent (BEEHIVE!), but I ended up half-heartedly checking out the album and turning it off during the first minute of
Third Law with both the riff and the vocal line annoying the shit out of me. Third time was the charm, though, as I’ve got
Bilateral the song from Tomislav in my second roulette—and still I didn’t delve into their discography until 2017, but at least they made my list of bands I intended to listen to.
I honestly don’t remember which album I tried first. I think I might’ve heard
The Cloak randomly hitting recommended YouTube videos and seeing Leprous in there, and then autoplay pulled the official video of
The Price which brought the memories of my first roulette back (BEEHIVE!), and I think I decided to give
The Congregation a second chance then.
The Congregation is a very chorus-oriented and rhythms-oriented album. Most of Leprous music is, but it especially shows on this record. I love good choruses (BEEHIVE!), which will be obvious once the Top 10 hits—at least six albums there have godlike choruses on almost every song—and on this particular album, all songs are united by catchy as hell choruses. Now, the thing is, the rest of the songs is also well thought out, with complex guitar and drum rhythms, and while perhaps slightly less, but still a lot of attention to the structure and sound of verses. See, I feel this is where their latest album,
Malina, suffered mostly: the choruses remained of the same quality, but the verses there are a bit underwhelming.
The Congregation offers a good amount of variety between songs and while there are repetition, I seem to remember a particularly similar drum rhythm in both
Red and
Slave, the rest of the album has enough ideas for each song to stand out on its own. You have frantic verses in
Third Law, which I warmed up to since 2015, slow and ominous pace of
Slave, almost playful verses of
Moon and tentative, quiet verses of
The Flood or
Lower. On
Malina there is some variety, but the verses are blurred for me, and I won’t be able to tell the verse from
Coma from the verse of
The Weight of Disaster or the newly released
Golden Prayers.
Even though this record is quite long, it’s always a pleasure to revisit it, and of course sing along to every song’s chorus. Seriously, they are that good.
Favourite songs:
The Price (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Slave (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Lower (
YouTube,
Spotify)
#12
Bilateral
Leprous
Genre: progressive metal
2011
Recommended to me by: Tomislav and DTF band thread
Bilateral is considered an essential album from Leprous, and after my first blunder with
Forced Entry, I seriously struggled to understand how come this album is so loved among the community. When I started listening to other Leprous album than
The Congregation, this was the one I was most eager to explore, and after the first listen, this was a huge disappointment. Almost gone were the majestic choruses, the sound was different, almost atonal in some places, the growls were used less sparingly and gracefully, the song structures were all over the place. But as I mentioned way back in the Bent Knee write up, this album ended up growing on me immensely to the point where I adore it.
While I’m still not that keen on
Forced Entry, and by “not that keen” I mean “I don’t think that’s their best song, which seems to be a popular opinion among Leprous fans”, I do think this song has a lot of potential, a very tight instrumental section and one of the most beautiful moments on the album during the quiet second verse. But it’s not
Forced Entry that makes this album so awesome, it’s the rest of the songs like incredibly fun
Restless where you can just feel this growl in the chorus is coming—would be a blast to see this live, that’s for sure—the ever-building up
Mediocrity Wins with its chorus ascending to the skies before delivering the final line, and the classic progressive
Painful Detour, where Leprous almost seem to be playing it safe for the sake of their listeners after having just taken them on a wild ride.
And most of all, when you get into this album, it just sounds like a lot of fun. The band seems to have incredible chemistry, and this record has a lot in common with one of the records from my Top 3, it just gives off this vibe of pure inspiration and carelessness about the general reception it would receive—the band is just doing whatever the hell they want and shape it into the form of songs. While records like
The Congregation and
Malina seem more polished and less spontaneous, this sounds almost exactly like the album art looks: lots of different things are put together in one big picture and for some reason it works flawlessly once you manage to unravel it. Only the art doesn’t quite work, because it looks kind of ridiculous, but otherwise the comparison is quite apt.
Having seem Leprous live on their tour for
Malina, it’s a shame Bilateral only gets one song in their current setlist, and worst of all, we got
Forced Entry for the encore, which is literally my second least favourite song from this record (
Waste of Air takes the cake here). But not counting that and almost a total lack of crowd interaction, the show was amazing as we’ve got both
The Price (BEEHIVE!) and
Slave,
The Flood,
The Valley and a lot of
Malina stuff too. One of the few shows where I was incredibly entertained just from watching the drummer do his thing; would go see them again if I get the chance.
Favourite songs:
Restless (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Mediocrity Wins (
YouTube,
Spotify),
Painful Detour (
YouTube,
Spotify)