Leprous “Aphelion” Album Review

LEPROUS-APHELION 14/11/2021

Dear Metalheads,

In this first music article on my own website, I wanted to talk about the new progressive metal band Leprous album Aphelion,  released on August 27, 2021. At the beginning of September, I had listened to a few tracks from this beautiful album, in the middle of all the Senjutsu and the Metallica Blacklist tumult. Those who happen to know me,  surely know how fond I am of vinyls: I have a vinyl archive made of different genres and it is always a pleasure to play them on my 1956 Imperial music cabinet that I have just added to my collection. My 1955 Grundig music cabinet is the apple of my eye and is a family legacy where I have listened to those lullabies by Abba to Boney M, from Barış Manço to Wagner.  From my best-loved vinyl store,  where I happen to go at least once a month, this time I chose Aphelion by Leprous, with the excitement of their İstanbul show on November 27th.

It is a two-records set album: the  bonus tracks are placed on side D from the second record:  “A prophecy to Trust” and “Acquired Taste”. The cover design and the records are very stylish: I couldn’t help myself but think about how many people today are buying LPs or enjoy listening from the deck and what would be the profit bands make from such a narrow market. I came home, started to listen immersed in deep thoughts about the LP market and in a split of a second the extraterrestrial voice of the wonderful countertenor Einar Solberg echoing ‘It’s a miracle’ made me forget every eartly thought.

Before moving on to my favorite tracks from the album, I was stuck on the cover art and the word Aphelion. On the cover, there is a pyramid-shaped structure resembling a spaceship just landed amidst the foggy mountains. There we see a man passing through the door that opens into the unknown, and above, a stylized pattern resembling the solar system. Let me state here that this pyramid is actually located in western Norway. As I wrote in my previous articles, let me repeat that after the pandemic and the lockdowns, musicians are pouring out what they have accumulated inside. Leprous is no exception. I, myself, think that the man inside the pyramid reminds us of those two years of darkness, depression and hopelessness that we have spent in our homes, and of all those quarantine days.

Despite my confidence in my proficient vocabulary in several languages, Aphelion didn’t mean much at first sight: the first thing I thought was that the word -helion would mean Helios, the Sun in Greek, so it might be related to the Sun. In astronomy, the word Aphelion, means the point where a planet or comet is furthest from the Sun in its elliptical orbit. (Earth in this case). Its opposite, Perihelion refers to the point where the planet is closest to the Sun. The title “Aphelion”, which I think might have many symbolic meanings, considering the distance to the Sun, evokes the endless darkness, cold and despair into which our world entered and where we were thrown into during the pandemic. Existentially, it might also be a reference to the deep darkness within which, as mankind, we are the furthest from the light: and if we personalize it further, we can understand it as the depression that Einar has struggled with for a while. Yet, as seen from the cover design, there is an exit to the light, that is to hope, through the door inside the pyramid (It’s a Miracle!).

In the tracks, the following lines made me think about depression and darkness, loaded with sincere confessions:

The beast is gone,

But I am trapped in his cage.

My mind is a prison. (The Silent Revelation)

…

Forgetting how to breathe

Haven’t left this chamber for three years.

Built my life beneath

Layers of dried up tears. (Out of Here)

Copernicus’ (1473-1543) Heliocentric astronomic model.

Today we know that the orbits are elliptic.

My favorite tracks from the album:

-Running Low

-Silhouette

-The Silent Revelation

-All The Moments

-Nighttime Disguise.

Some of you may think that the album sounds too poppy: but as a child of the 80s, I adored it.

Aphelion is one of the albums that are seamless, as in tone,  musical structure and lyrics, flowing from the beginning to the end. Glorious and dark-toned “Running Low”  is enriched with symphonic touches, leaving a taste of classical music. Here let’s speak about the wonderful cello artist Raphael Weinroth-Browne, whom I happened to follow for quite a long time, with all of his original solo works and his collaborations with metal artists: his cello parts are noticed in Running Low. If you want to explore more of his works try Opeth’s “Harvest for 9 cellos” , From Within (2020) and Out of the Ether (2021). “Out of the Ether” outstands with its oriental / anatolian melodies.

At this point, I would like bow before all of these classical music performers and composers who are metalheads at heart. Again, if you like ethnic, original and different music, I suggest you take a look at the music from the band “Kamancello” (kemenche and cello), which Raphael founded together with the Kurdish-Iranian-Canadian kemenche artist Shahriyar Cemşidi (Shahriyar Jamshidi) (it sounds a bit like limoncello though  ). Let me also state that the kamanche (kemenche or little violin) mentioned here shares has the same name in Turkish, but is different in structure and sound from the kemenche used in our music.

Going back to Aphelion, while listening to the album, I noticed how parallel Einar’s vocal style is with Björk’s, another Nordic artist that I adore. Especially in “Silhouette” and “The Silent Revelation”, Einar’s Björk-like cries add further to this impression. I would even go one step further and say that I had a taste of Duran Duran in some songs, in terms of tempo and synth style. Aphelion, constructed with unpredictable melody and rhythms, its eclectic, multi-layered, rich and solid structural elements, defines the term “progressive” and ends with Einar’s death growl on the closing track “Nighttime Disguise”.

The Norwegian band, which has a unique place and audience in the progressive metal world with its truly unique sound, will be on stage in Istanbul on November  27th, as its fans already know. We will watch Leprous on the occasion of their 10th anniversary festivities of the “Bilateral” album… I already bought my ticket and started the countdown. I will happily listen to Leprous on the 27th of November and who knows, maybe when they play “Acquired Taste”, added to Aphelion as a bonus track, I might surrender my soul in ecstasy, we’ll see.

@metaloda is a registered Trademark.

(c) 2021   Metal Oda. All rights reserved. Quotations without reference is forbidden.