Einar Solberg - frontman of Norwegian rock mavericks Leprous – released his debut solo album, 16, earlier this year. But back at the beginning of 2022, he took on an entirely different solo endeavour. For a special livestreamed performance, he reinterpreted the Leprous album, The Congregation in full, just piano and voice. Now that performance will see an official audio release as The Congregation Acoustic on February 16.

Today he is pleased to launch the video for his special performance of the track, "Within My Fence".

Einar comments: "If there's one song from our catalogue I'd make a bet that I'd never release an acoustic version of, it would be ‘Within My Fence’. Nothing about that song implies it would work as an acoustic version. To my big surprise it did, and it gave the song a whole other vibe and maybe also more depth?"

Einar comments on the release of The Congregation Acoustic: “I'm both super excited but also kind of terrified for me to release this live version of The Congregation. It's raw and unedited and exactly how I did it on my livestream. Usually all musicians these days (myself included) are used to fixIng stuff in post-production, but on this one we've done nothing! I think it's cool sometimes to dare to show a more fragile and less "perfect" side of yourself. The Congregation is probably the least suitable album we've ever done to make an acoustic version of, but I think it turned out surprisingly OK!"

The Congregation Acoustic will be released as a limited CD Digipak, Limited Gatefold 180g Black 2LP, and as Digital Album. The cover artwork was shot by Elena Sihida. Pre-order now here.

Tracklisting:

"The Price" (Live)
"Third Law" (Live)
"Rewind" (Live)
"The Flood" (Live)
"Triumphant" (Live)
"Within My Fence" (Live)
"Red" (Live)
"Slave" (Live)
"Moon" (Live)
"Down" (Live)
"Lower" (Live)

"The Flood" video: