It can be pretty safely argued that Leprous has released two damn near perfect albums back-to-back, those being 2011's Bilateral and 2013's Coal. Now that the band is finally winding down in terms of touring on the latter record, vocalist for the group Einar Solberg, along with guitarists Oystein Landsverk and Tor Suhrke, took the time out of their busy schedule to answer a few questions for Metal Underground regarding the new record! Solberg said the band has thrown away "at least 15 songs" in search of compiling the perfect record, adding they hope to hit the studio in November to start recording drums.
"The US and UK tour will be the last for Coal. We wrote 13 sketches of songs, and we’ve been working 3-4 times as much from the previous albums just writing, writing, writing. At least, I’ve had that as a main priority for a very long time. We have a lot of things to choose between, and then we can start to narrow it down to start making it the perfect album and not have to settle, where we can perfect the album."
Solberg also touches on not settling for medicrity on a Leprous record and striving to find a new sound.
"I think you just have to be open to your influences but not cling to them. The problem is that too many people do things as routine and stop challenging themselves. They stop listening to their inspiration and just do what they think will please. We could have done that with ‘Bilateral,’ because we know how to write that kind of music if that’s what we wanted to do, but it would be a really fake expression. It wouldn’t have been true for us at that moment."
The group also said they don't plan on having Ihsahn on the record as they've done in the past, which makes sense considering they're his live backing band, but nothing is set in stone currently.
