Band:
Einar Solberg - synth/vocals
Tor Oddmund Suhrke - guitar
Øystein Landsverk - guitar
Rein Blomquist - bass
Tobias Ørnes Andersen - drums
Discography:
Aeolia (2006)
Tall Poppy Syndrome (2009)
Guests:
Ihsahn
Info
mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren / Fascination Street
Front Cover: Jeff Jordan
Booklet Design: Ritxi Ostariz
Released 22/8-2011
Reviewed 15/8-2011
Links:
leprous.net
myspace
youtube
insideout
As you might notice I am adding some elements of surprise or oddness you might also say, this is in a way to illustrate the progressive nature. The album is musically a progressive rock album and if you ask me how it sounds I will have to tell you that it sounds a bit like eating a bag of electrons in a crowded basement room while waiting for a rock band to play rock music, something like that. But to be serious for a second, Bilateral has a majestic overall sound which is also accentuated by the voice of the singer which is sort of pompous and clean. This sound runs like the red thread through the album while the songs vary quite a lot between one another and we fins everything from trumpets to quite aggressive metal parts throughout this album. It is hard to just describe it in one sentence but I have managed after lots of digging through old graves to find a one sentence description of this album: it sounds progressive rock in the fashion of the album cover. That description leaves no questions.
To say that this album is exciting is like saying that having a lot of money gives you possibility to buy lots of things, which means it is stating the obvious. The variation, the great vocals and the overall sound are all very good things for Leprous and their Bilateral album. They manage to vary an album from walking through darkish mushroom forests to where giant bananas grace the mycelia on the ground and evil fans are lurking in hollows ready to attack and shred the bananas to little banana coins, to being lost in the giant sea where miniature sharks with pointy teeth is trying to eat you or the kittens you have in you inflatable raft while evil giant octopuses are trying to attack from above, and then you are in a yellow submarine on the sea floor where giant snails are eating slime which they then secrete on the sea floor while moving forwards towards the streets of Stockholm. I think it is an album that takes you places that dares to push the envelope and to reinvent their music and not just make stuff that has been made before over and over again. Majestic, exciting, light, dark, powerful, laid-back, catchy, complex and more can be said about this band from Norway.
Not even the album being fifty eight minutes long feels like much of a problem, it is actually a rather fine time for this album to play. I think this review speaks for itself, it is a very good album that anyone who claims to be into the progressive side of things should own.
HHHHHHH
