By Jase Walker
It’s Friday, it’s Tilburg again, but it’s Leprous. There are bands that occupy the top five prog bands space for me and Leprous occupies a huge space within that and I don’t think I’ve passed off a chance to see them any time in the last decade and today is no different.
Okay to set the scene, this is another special run of shows as “An Evening With…” Leprous, it’s going to be filmed because it’s one of the biggest shows they’ve done in Europe, it’s got a fan choir as well and more than likely a huge selection of songs from their historical catalogue as well as a smattering of ‘Memories Of Atonement’.
It’s time for them to start and the ample time between doors and start has allowed the crowd (myself) included to get a bit of social lubricant going. Leading with ‘Silently Walking Alone’ to get people comfortable and going with the familiar chorus of the new album and then leading to an old favourite with ‘The Price’, time to switch gears for everyone’s amusement.
I’m not sure whether the aim of the set so far is to get the bigger oldies out of the way to make room for the newer ones but ‘Illuminate’ is a welcome one before I completely and utterly ruin my voice trying to keep up with Einar. Admittedly it’s quite fun trying to keep up with Einar and his ridiculous soaring through the octaves but it seems that it’s not just me in the crowd that’s intent on battering their voices tonight. Unexpected pyrotechnics suddenly feel like they’re frying my eyebrows as I was taking notes on the show just as they decided to start cooking my forehead!
Considering this was teased at RADAR festival last year and we didn’t get it thanks to an absolutely tasteless audience, ‘Forced Entry’, is a welcome return to live performance that I genuinely thought I’d never actually ever see! I mean if you want to see Baard groove in a way that absolutely begs belief then this one is definitely one way to witness that.
Sometimes I do forget how fucking long some of the ‘Bilateral’ songs are though… ten minutes! Little wonder they’ve opted for an “Evening with..” set for it. Also, I appear to have found my high register singing buddy for ‘Alleviate’, perfect, now I don’t feel so alone trying to absolutely destroy my throat going for that head voice/falsetto fuckery.
So far to myself I feel like this is paying a better homage to their lengthy discography than their ‘Anthology’ tour a few years back. I mean picking two of your best from each album and moving through it chronologically is kind of a cool idea, but it doesn’t quite seem to make a cohesive set. In contrast to that, this set has clearly had much more thought put into it and how it would work as a live show that works properly. For the first set we’ve danced around a mixture of facets of Leprous’s sound over the years, but it’s never felt jarring or inconsistent, it’s been a carefully curated journey.
A small intermission and a refresh of beers, it’s time for round two! By this point some people are definitely trying their luck by trying to get past further into the crowd and it’s already shoulder to shoulder by this point. Anyway, ‘Unfree My Soul’ brings back the chorus of people trying to match Einar and his massive pitch range around me, good luck and may your throats be in one piece tomorrow morning.
If there’s a huge element of Leprous that is made obvious at a show like this is how a band that can push such tremendous force like these can carry such tenderness and subtlety in their quieter moments. Leprous is an act that weaves their songs like a complex tapestry, for every garish, broad strokes there are incredible intricate parts and attention to the smallest detail.
The slow, lumbering intro for ‘Below’ packs an incredible punch before moving to its more groovy parts too. I’d love to bang on about Einar’s vocals constantly because they are truly amazing but legitimately the band as a whole have been truly fantastic too, not that they’re a footnote or anything because it’s very easy to be drawn towards Einar.
Speaking of arguably doing a better job of showcasing their history, ‘Passing’ is a callback to their earliest work after a somewhat lengthy pop quiz to see if anyone in the Netherlands remembers their first foray outside of Scandinavia. To have a chat before the fan choir part, they demonstrated a… bass… ukulele..? Can’t say I expected that at least. At the very least it actually works though, fat sound for something so.. little.
We get a solid turnout for the fan choir too and it sounds absolutely fucking incredible, absolutely no other words for it, such a small thing to add and yet a profound impact on the show! We’re moving to the final stages and throwing in ‘From The Flame’ suddenly stirs the energy back up from a lull of more subtle ballads over past segments.
It’s finally encore time, ‘Atonement’ is the song of choice to close out a properly epic set from Leprous Andi can pretty confidently say after seeing them so many times that this is without a doubt the absolute apex of any show they’ve played (that I’ve seen at least). A true miasma of different eras of Leprous over the years, condensed into two tremendous sets and sewn together with brilliant performances in both parts.
Shows like this make doing whatever is necessary to see them absolutely worthwhile. Truly incredible.
- Leprous play the ArcTanGent festival on Thursday 14 August.
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