LEPROUS

When your goal is to make adventurous, progressive music, radical change is always to be welcomed. LEPROUS have already contributed a huge amount to the evolution of modern prog, with a series of albums, stretching back to 2009, that have never displayed an obvious debt to anything else or contrived to capitalize on one particular sound.

The Norwegians sounded pretty radical on 2013's "Coal", and their desire to conjure something genuinely new has enabled them to avoid repeating themselves ever since. They reached new heights on 2019's emotionally grueling "Pitfalls", and then made "Aphelion" two years later: an eclectic, diverse left turn that suggested several potential new directions. "Melodies of Atonement" takes no cues from either of its immediate predecessors, which we probably should have seen coming. LEPROUS are nothing if not creatively restless, as their eighth full-length noisily confirms.

If "Aphelion" suggested that Einar Solberg and his comrades were searching for a fresh path to follow, "Melodies of Atonement" is unequivocal proof that they have simply carved it themselves. A self-explanatory exercise in stripping away the unnecessary, this is the sound of LEPROUS rediscovering their potency as a living, breathing band. The esoteric arrangements and stylistic shimmying that occurred last time out have been entirely supplanted by a new, improved and often startlingly heavy form of undiluted LEPROUS concentrate.

Comprising ten succinct, stridently melodic songs, with very little in the way of abstract atmosphere or willful complexity, "Melodies…" amounts to a comprehensive upgrade. It is also an album full of songs that LEPROUS will be thrilled to play live, with a production that blends ruthless modernity with the rounded tones and textures of organic rock. Whether calculated or spontaneous (or, as seems likely, both),this is the sound of musicians rediscovering their love of making a racket, albeit a meticulously crafted one.

Many have been ruined emotionally by past LEPROUS classics like "Below" (from "Pitfalls") and "Illuminate" (from 2017's "Malina"),and while "Melodies of Atonement" is clearly a punchier affair than any previous album, the joyous melodies that Solberg has made his trademark are still available in large quantities. "Silently Walking Alone" is a tense, industrially inclined opener with an unsettling, shuffling beat that glitches at will, but when the chorus kicks in, the skies open, tears rain down, and the chances of finding a dry eye (or indeed, seat) in the house are comprehensively reduced. Next, recent single "Atonement" is almost feline in its stealth, as the throb of ghostly electronics gives way to another colossal chorus hook, and LEPROUS switch from minimalist art rock to heavy metal pomp and back again, nailing every cerebral peak and gut-level trough along the way. Solberg, as ever, sings like an angel on the run from some unknown evil. On the wonderfully blank-eyed and blissful "My Specter", he sings so beautifully that the surrounding instrumentation almost feels like an intrusion. On this occasion, the chorus is fabulously dark and driven by some deeply peculiar riffs, but the hooks still land.

Newly acquainted with getting to the point, LEPROUS are reborn. The rest of these songs follow a vaguely similar pattern, with often exquisitely ingenious verses blossoming into hard-hitting melodic refrains that seem to linger in the air long after the songs themselves have faded away. "I Hear The Sirens" is a gloriously melodramatic anti-ballad with a skittering, electronic underbelly; "Like A Sunken Ship" wields gnarly heavy metal riffs like weapons of (emotional) war; "Limbo" is an angular, funk rock beast, with a fidgeting groove and cries of "Renegade! Renegade!" from a particularly spiky Solberg; and, most dazzling of all, "Self-Satisfied Lullaby" is a sophisticated, cosmic pop song that slowly mutates into a shimmering, amorphous cloud of choral vocals and anchorless ambience, before LEPROUS re-emerge in thunderous alt-rock band mode, paving the way for the volatile melodrama of the closing "Unfree My Soul", which, again, has a chorus that will nail people to the wall.

A precise and pristine dose of modern progressive heaviness that is genuinely worthy of the description, "Melodies of Atonement" is the kind of immaculate statement that we expect, but this time LEPROUS are really hammering it home.