On the rainy evening of November 19th, 2025, we made our way through the Reeperbahn in Hamburg to find shelter at the venue Docks. The Norwegian quintet LEPROUS had made a stop at the German harbour during the first leg of their European Tour supporting their latest release, “Melodies of Atonement.” They were joined by the Finnish quartet ROYAL SORROW, and the Norwegian former Eurovision contestants GÅTE.
The openers this evening are ROYAL SORROW. Given the fact that their debut album “Innerdeeps” (released via InsideOut Music) was only released a few months ago, we understand if you haven’t heard about them yet. However, if you’re into the more progressive spheres of heavy genres, we urge you to change that as soon as possible; listen to this band and catch them live whenever you can. For me, it is baffling how such a young band can, with their very first album, offer this level of compositional skill and production, and on top of it be completely on point with the live execution.
Next in line were the Norwegian representatives of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2023, GÅTE. It’s actually very entertaining to me that LEPROUS chose to take them on tour, as I perfectly remember the first time that I heard their entry for the music contest back in 2023 and explicitly told everyone around me how they—to me— sounded like Leprous adapted for Eurovision. While there are some parallels in both bands’ music here and there (especially in the guitar tuning), this evening showed me that GÅTE are their own thing, and great at it. The folk elements the band adds to their already heavy, yet accessible, compositions are as unique as the powerful voice of Gunnhild Sundli.
The time came for the headliners of the evening to enter the stage. LEPROUS started with the first single, “Silently Walking Alone,” off their latest album, “Melodies Of Atonement,” released last year via InsideOut Music. While this is the song we anticipated to work best live, a couple of pleasant surprises followed as we listened to the live versions of other songs from their latest release, such as “Atonement” and “Like A Sunken Ship.” In general, I personally struggled to listen to the entirety of “Melodies of Atonement,” which isn’t a great indicator of a (hypothetical) enjoyment-scale measurement of a live presentation (beats me why anyone would ever do that). Now listen: while most people follow a straightforward hedonistic treadmill when it comes to listening to music, which means they mostly listen to that which they substantially enjoy. The question is: why do people go to a concert of music they aren’t sure they like?
For me, the answer is simple: it’s LEPROUS (Tall Poppy Syndrome- & Coal-Ultras: unite.) Beyond what has been said several times by God-knows-how-many live reviewers in the world about their technical prowess, their energetic performances, and genre-blending music, my perspective concentrates on the fact that, regardless of the execution, this band always has something important to say with their music, and you bet it’s worth listening to. Even when the message that the last album conveyed wasn’t clear through listening to the record, it became so when the songs were experienced live. Even better, the songs became important components of the bigger picture that painted the set played that evening, all of which seemed to be united by an invisible string in terms of the style of the songs from “Pitfalls” and “The Congregation.”
It is quite an interesting thing to realize, considering our personal preferences when it comes to our favorite albums of this band, and the fact that (for whatever reason) “Pitfalls” and “The Congregation” would’ve occupied the last positions on the list before this particular concert. This tour, and in particular this setlist, has allowed us to understand those songs better, see them in a light we could not see before, and fully embrace them to the point of addictive post-concert listening. The downside is that, when a band like LEPROUS is as evolved in their craft and live execution as they are, we are confronted with the “luxury problem” of the experience of listening to their albums feeling like it lacks an edge in comparison to the intense live experience.
Text and Photos by Michelle R.
