Leprous: Bilateral (5/5)

Joshua's Top 10 Albums of 2011

#4 of 11

Year: 2011

Genre: Progressive Metal

Label: InsideOut

TRT: 58:05

Leprous' last album, Tall Poppy Syndrome, really impressed me, so my expectations were very high for this one. And apparently they were up for the challenge. They really took things up a notch. Everything they did right on TPS, they improve upon. Vocalist Einar Solberg is particularly impressive. His performance on TPS is excellent, but there are several points during this album that my jaw literally dropped. These guys are the real deal, and they're raising the bar for progressive metal in spectacular fashion.

Also I don't usually bother making "best songs" lists for any given year, but gun to my head, I'd probably have to say my favorite track from 2011 is Forced Entry.

01 Bilateral

02 Forced Entry

03 Restless

04 Thorn

05 Mb. Indifferentia

06 Waste of Air

07 Mediocrity Wins

08 Cryptogenic Desires

09 Acquired Taste

10 Painful Detour

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Periphery: Periphery [Instrumental] (4.5/5)

Joshua's Top Ten "Metal" Picks for 2010
#5 of 10



Year: 2010
Genre: Progressive Polymetric Metal
Label: Sumerian
TRT: 71:26

This album has been in the works for more than 5 years. Fighting through multiple line-up changes, most notable a veritable revolving door at the vocalist position, this labor of love was finally released. And it comes off in a bit of a "we're just going to get this fucking thing out there and move on" sort of way, mostly because every song on the album has been online in one form or another for years.

Be that as it may, this album kicks much ass. Thick, mean, and impeccable executed, the music sounds better than ever. Unfortunately, The vocals are another matter, but since they released an instrumental version of the album too, I'm going to give Spencer Sotelo a pass on this one. He came into the recording process with a very short period of time to learn lyrics and vocal parts written by previous singers with different styles, and did the best he could at the time. Since then he's grown substantially as a performer, and I look forward to seeing what he can do in his own right.

Having said that, I would recommend getting the instrumental version (though both are provided here). Listening to the version with vocals first, and then a few weeks later listening to the instrumentals, it was like listening to the album for the first time all over again, because so much of the nuances and subtleties are masked or obscured by the often distracting vocals. They do grow on you after a time, but if you're only going to get one, get the instrumentals.

01 Insomnia
02 The Walk
03 Letter Experiment
04 Jetpacks Was Yes
05 Light
06 All New Materials
07 Buttersnips
08 Icarus Lives
09 Totla Mad
10 Ow My Feelings
11 Zyglrox
12 Racecar

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Leprous: Tall Poppy Syndrome (4.5/5)

Year: 2009
Genre: Progressive Metal
Label: Sensory
TRT: 63:00

A few months ago I asked some friends at an online music community to take a look at my rateyourmusic account and recommend me one album to purchase. While I got several interesting recommendations, this is the one that I added to my shopping cart.

It’s not often that I make blind buys these days, but I was feeling cheeky and immediately ordered this album without hearing a single note (along with the new Shining, but you’ll hear more about that at the end of the year). Lucky for me, I struck gold.

Leprous play a strain of progressive metal not dissimilar to Opeth or Riverside, but they don’t come across like a clone, or that they’re even trying to emulate those bands (or any other band for that matter). Instead they pound out some very memorable tracks threaded together with a great sense of harmony and balance, blending harshness and power with subtlety and beauty. The one misstep (if I were to call it that), is a ham-handed spoken word section towards the end of the CD, but it’s easy to let that slide when you take the quality of the rest of Tall Poppy Syndrome in to consideration.

01 Passing
02 Phantom Pain
03 Dare You
04 Fate
05 He Will Kill Again
06 Not Even a Name
07 Tall Poppy Syndrome
08 White

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Veni Domine: Material Sanctuary (4.5/5)

Year: 1994
Label: Thunderload
Genre: Atmospheric Power Doom
TRT: 65:42

Pretty inventive for the time, combining the heavy elements of doom metal with the vocal stylings of power metal, with none of the silliness. Choral arrangements and keyboards add a good dose of "epic" to this prophetic tale of imminent destruction.

eBay is a much better place to aquire this title as well as their debut Fall Babylon Fall, as Amazon users seem to be a bit more unwilling to part with their copies.

01 The Meeting
02 Ecclesiastes
03 Material Sanctuary
04 Ritual of the Sinner
05 The Mass
06 Behold the Signs
07 Wrath of the Lion
08 Beyond the Doom
09 Baroque Moderne

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Between the Buried and Me: Colors (5/5)

#4 out of 10
Metal Album of 2007

Year: 2007
Label: Victory
Genre: Progressive Metalcore
TRT: 64:09

Colors is a huge step forward in the evolution of this band. As polarizing as it is addicting. You still have intense technicality, but it’s more mature, seasoned. This album is like an eight piece puzzle that fits together perfectly, with dozens of smaller puzzles contained within the songs themselves, going from beautiful piano parts, to blistering guitar-work, to off kilter Patton-esque vocal parts overtop honky-tonk piano, to a drunken bar sing-along. It will take you by surprise, it might make you a bit uneasy, but it all fits together. However, my favorite part of the whole production is the song transitions. They’re perfect. Seamless. A Work of Art. I was not prepared for the transition from Informal Gluttony into Sun of Nothing, and I almost wrecked my car when I heard it. One of my favorite parts of music ever written. Also, Blake Richardson deserves a special mention, because the drumming on this album is spectacular, far beyond any expectations. This album will age much better than any of their previous albums, I can already tell.
Review by Praemorior

#10 out of 10
Metal Album of 2007
I feel like I have a love/hate relationship with Between The Buried & Me's "Colors". Everytime I listen to it I get something new that I love more than my first listen, but there are still a few parts that just don't sit right. I feel the vibe they were going with and they do it well, but why put in parts that just twist the vibe?
Review by |A Study in Temperament|

part 1
part 2

01 Foam Born: (A) The Backtrack
02 (B) The Decade of Statues
03 Informal Gluttony
04 Sun of Nothing
05 Ants of the Sky
06 Prequel to the Sequel
07 Viridian
08 White Walls

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Blotted Science: The Machinations of Demensia (5/5)

#3 out of 10
Metal Album of 2007

Year: 2007
Label: Unsigned
Genre: Instrumental Progressive Metal
TRT: 57:15

As a testament to it’s greatness, I didn’t hear this album until October, and it was almost immediately not just in my favorites of the year, but counted as one of the best instrumental albums I’ve ever heard. If I had to make a comparison, I would describe this album as the result of James Malone from Arsis suffering from extreme sleep deprivation and listening to nothing but Meshuggah for days until finally passing out. If you are familiar with Spastic Ink and other Jarzombeck projects, you probably already know about this record, and it’s probably in your headphones right now.
Review by Praemorior

#6 out of 10
Metal Album of 2007
First off if you like Between The Buried & Me you'll love this album. It's instrumental but the riffs will keep you entertained. In the first song "Synaptic Plasticity" I was listening and then this crazy drum roll came out of nowhere and this heavy guitar tone that was absent before just stunned me. This will continue to happen over and over through out the album. When you get to the end listen to the last two songs again (this may sound strange). The last two songs are unique in that, the last song is the song before it in reverse. This was pointed out to me by Praemorior, and I love that you can hear the beats and guitars from the opposite and reverse end.
Review by |A Study in Temperament|

01 Synaptic Plasticity
02 Laser Lobotomy
03 Brain Fingerprinting
04 Oscillation Cycles
05 Activation Synthesis Theory
06 R.E.M.
07 Night Terror
08 Bleeding In The Brain
09 Vegetation
10 Narcolepsy
11 E.E.G. Tracings
12 Sleep Deprivation
13 The Insomniac
14 Amnesia
15 Adenosine Breakdown
16 Adenosine Buildup

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