We recently spoke to Leprous vocalist Einar Solberg about his dream tour and setlist. You can view some bands the vocalist would like to hit the road with as well as which songs he would play below.
What is one band you’ve previously toured with that you’d like to again?
Well, I’d say Between the Buried and Me. We bonded very well and are a really good match for us both socially and musically. There’s so many bands that I toured with before and consider good friends that I’d love to tour with anytime like Agent Fresco or Haken.
And on the contrary, what's a band you haven’t toured with yet that you'd really like to?
I’d have to think a bit about who we could gain most from like Tool or Muse, who aren’t specifically in the prog genre and reaches out wider to a more mainstream audience. I think our music isn’t like prog prog. It has a lot of prog elements, but it could appeal elsewhere. Devin Townsend said it well once like being a metal band is like being a porn actress. If you’re playing a different style, people are always going to say yeah, well you did metal once and that will always be your audience. Like Anathema for example have nothing to do with metal. If that band started nowadays, they would have no metalheads in their audience, but they are stuck with that reputation. And that’s fine with me, but sometimes you feel like you shouldn’t be stuck at a festival with Saxon or Finntroll. Sometimes we feel like we’d fit better at like alternative rock festivals instead.
If you had to choose one song from each album for a retrospective setlist, which would you choose?
- Tall Poppy Syndrome – If I was forced to choose one, it’s always “Passing” or “Dare You,” but I’ll choose “Passing.” It always feels like time travel every time we do that. Like we went back in time and I’m a teenager again. I know some people love it and it has that youth attitude, but it feels super awkward for me to do it now.
- Bilateral – I prefer “Acquired Taste” because it goes best with our new material.
- Coal – One song from that would probably be “The Valley.”
- The Congregation – I think it would be “The Price” I guess. It’s not necessarily the one I like to play the most. We’ve played that album so much.
- Malina – I love to play “Bonneville” because it’s different. It’s very fresh for us right now. It’s more loose and open, where The Congregation was more tight and straight to the point.
Any countries you’d really like to tour that you haven't yet?
We need to do South America. It’s the only thing left of the common markets to hit. We’re definitely going to do that at some point really soon. We have a lot of fans there as well.
