“Our fans agree with Yngwie Malmsteen – more is more!”: What Leprous learned when they wrote a song with their audience

Norwegian progressive metal band Leprous have discussed how a fan collaboration on their earlier album Aphelion shaped their subsequent work, though not in the way that might have been expected. Rather than repeating the maximalist approach fans favoured, the band opted to strip back their sound on eighth studio album Melodies Of Atonement, focusing on what the core five-piece could achieve without added orchestration.

The fan collaboration produced the track Nighttime Disguise on Aphelion, written during Covid lockdown livestreams, which guitarist Tor Oddmund Suhrke says confirmed that fans favour complexity, combining three time signatures, three keys and multiple guitar types into one song. For Melodies Of Atonement, however, singer Einar Solberg said the band wanted to explore what could be achieved using only the instruments within the group, comparing their approach to a football team where members don't all occupy the same role at once, and arguing that removing elements can make the music more impactful rather than simply adding more.