RIVERSIDE

12 tracks with 6 on each CD, the LP on 3 vinyls, the Blu-Ray DVD with its 12 tracks piled up and a bonus with the pleasure of the video recorded in Poland: "#Addicted" as a well-rehearsed intro to 2015's 'Love', "Panic Room" for one of the two hits from 2007's 'Rapid'. "Landmine Blast" and "Big Tech Brother" from last year's ID' to really open the musical ball with this innovative sound from their latest album; a sound unique to them that has no equal and that the live performance transcends a little more, with a great DZIĘKI launched to the audience, in conquered territory. "Lost" from 'Love' for the dithyrambic crescendo, the very fat synth solo and this chorus taken up in unison, Maciej's solo who appropriates his space in a solemn and masterful way. Finally, "Left Out" from 'Anno' from 2009 concludes this first set with this bewitching, repetitive, trance-inducing tune, with a Floydian tune that repeats itself endlessly and the purely progressive metal break. A bit of DEEP PURPLE-style sound made to reprise Oh Oh Ohhhh, in his room in front of his stereo at the top of his lungs.

"Post-Truth" and the first track of 2023, which was not in the set at the Loreley; just for this heavy finale, a sound sticking to the skin that makes you get up and move endlessly on it while screaming; prog metal I say. "The Place Where I Belong" long track with its Floydian peregrination, its progressive variation taking you far, far, so far that time stops and melts any prog fan in need of a concert. "Egoist Hedonist" by Anno again, 2nd track in addition with a trumpet sample that is even more confusing live. "Friend or Foe?" follows for the es'80s track, to dance, sing, snap your fingers to, TEARS FOR FEARS, ULTRAVOX in sight. "Self-Aware" with the DEEP PURPLE intro and the reggae air, innovative, confusing and a finale worthy of a live performance. "Conceiving You" with this basic intro, reminiscent of the soundtrack of 'Silent Hill', I digress but it's the captivating atmosphere that strikes me every time. The pearl of their 2nd album with the radio hit, then the variation, the progressive deviance with Mariusz and his bass, yes it's not just RUSH, IRON MAIDEN, QUEEN, THIN LIZZY or DREAM THEATER who had great bassists. The title that puts the live CD back in the spotlight with its unique enjoyable digressions and the dialogue of the said DUDA in final communion with his audience, with you; go one, two, three, four, RIVERSIDE makes rock'n'roll.

RIVERSIDE recorded this live in June 2024 in Poland; 3 Lps, 2 Cds, the blu-ray for those who haven't seen them yet. At a time when concerts are becoming increasingly rare, throwing yourself on these pieces is a real plus showing the fluidity, the movement, the delicacy of prog rock of the new millennium. Arrangements boost the soul of Mariusz and his friends, half of the tracks coming from their latest album prove, if it were still necessary, that RIVERSIDE is indeed the band looking to the future. They offer new music, original music as he had so rightly told me a few years ago. An evolving sound that does not remain in the progressive straitjackets and a RIVERSIDE that continues to innovate with the perpetual search for recent sounds bathed in the flavors of yesterday. The pleasant musical association with a disconcerting and changing aspect of the beaten paths. The Blu-Ray offers a quarter-hour documentary to bathe in the backstage of the concert and to have this unspeakable pleasure: to see RIVERSIDE in concert at home comfortably installed, the musical pleasure is definitely priceless, no limit.

Riverside's second album, Second Life Syndrome, surprisingly flew under my radar for a while. I've been using multiple music forums, and I've spoken to multiple music fans since 2023, and yet somehow, I only found out about the band around two months ago (at the time of writing this review). When I got around to listening to the album, I was disappointed to say the least. The album is severely overrated and is simply an alright album that I can manage to listen to. The album is a concept album that's the second in a three-part trilogy that included their first and third albums. The overall concept is alright, and I like how the band explores unique emotions, ideas, and musical elements in each of the three albums. Speaking of the unique musical elements, Second Life Syndrome changes from the original characteristics of their first album, Out Of Myself. It's influenced more by heavier and progressive elements, combining longer compositions with aggressive guitar work. Moving on to the album cover, I thought it had a good idea around it, but the overall cover just isn't that impressive or substantial. You can tell where different things were added in through editing, and the uncanny look of some of the stretched bits looks out of place. The highlight tracks on the album are the title track, Reality Dream III, Dance With the Shadows, and Before.

The opening track, After, isn't that great, though, with it being split between a short spoken word passage and strange, spacey noise and unintelligible lyrics. The next song, Volte-Face, is better but is still not up to par with the highlights I mentioned. It's just a bit boring and has nothing really interesting except for the fact that it's a regular metal song with a progressive twist. I also cannot stand the screams their singer Mariusz Duda does throughout the album. In my opinion, he isn't really fit for the metal genre. Conceiving You is, from what I can tell, the most popular song on the album. It's not that interesting, and for the most part, just average radio metal for the time. Up next is the fifteen-minute-long title track, which is my favorite song off the album. It contains a level of complexity that I find quite enjoyable and intricate and technical playing by the band that doesn't drag the listener but grabs them and journeys through the different stages of the song. Even though my rating for the album might not be high, this song definitely deserves a strong 4/5 rating. However, the band sacrifices this progressive energy for Artificial Smile, which leans away from traditional progressive rock, like the title track, and more into heavier material. I Turned You Down continues the trend of the more solidified metal music. I still do appreciate the weaving of more complex material into the veins of the last two songs, but it still has the less intriguing edge to it. Reality Dreams III brings the listener back into the elaborate mix of progressive madness. This is similar to Dream Theater's Dance of Eternity, with its instrumental music giving the song time to breathe out the multiplex time signatures and create a new musical soundscape that intertwines the audience and music. I find this to be pretty cool, as I wasn't expecting such a comeback this far in the album. Dance With the Shadow is the second suite off the album, being around eleven minutes. Similar to the title track, it's actually quite interesting and has a sense of technicality similar to Reality Dreams III. Some of the parts draw influences from the band Tool, and the band's own unique input is also pretty good. The atmosphere of the song sets the mood in a good way, and the overall progressive insights of this wrap up this song nicely. The final song is called Before, and I have mixed feelings about this song. It has a depressing feeling that shows true emotion, but I feel the band could've shown some better musicianship. The playing is just a little bland, and the structure isn't complex or that thought out. 

In conclusion, the album could've been a lot better had the band added some more passion into their playing and tweaked a few songs around. It's boring at parts and not interesting enough for me to look at it fondly. Sure, it had its moments here and there, but the overwhelming lack of enthusiasm and excellent songwriting certainly holds back my rating for this album. I know I'm the minority when I say this, but the highest I can give it is a 3/5.

Representing the minority of people who favor Riverside's debut album over their sophomore release 'Second Life Syndrome', I must say that their second studio outing is an unnecessarily drab album that is way too derivative of its predecessor, quite one-dimensional compared to 'Out of Myself' which bolstered a fine balance between heavy and mellow, and with significantly less memorable moments and highlights, in opposition to the general opinion that this is the band's strongest offering. Not to mention the hideous album cover - perhaps reflective of the music and the overall feel of 'Second Life Syndrome'. The Polish proggers followed up their lovely debut album with a record that strongly draws upon the same influences, this time however with a much stronger inclination for a heavier sound, abandoning their more experimental and even psychedelic aspirations, glimpses of which could have occasionally been caught on 'Out of Myself'.

And in an attempt to craft a more rough-sounding album, Riverside had apparently focused on a more guitar-driven riff-based writing, as opposed to the more organic sounds of their debut album, resulting in a less-thrilling experience. The 15-minute title track is arguably the highlight of the album, a fine presentation of the various aspects of Riverside's music, when they successfully integrate their melodic choruses into the dense nature of their often-drab songs. 'Volte-Face' is another good example of how their heavier inclinations may lead to pleasant results, together with the shorter track 'Conceiving You', reminiscent of the band's previous album. Nevertheless, there are many uninteresting moments here (examples would include the opening and closing tracks, 'Artificial Smile', 'I Turned You Down', and 'Dance with the Shadow'), as the band tends to drift away from their focused songwriting into a more technical style of play that does not complement the songs but instead makes up for a much colder delivery. As good as the album is, it has a more monotonous presentation, derivative of the sound of the band's debut album, as mentioned previously and definitely colder and more contrived in execution. Even if the main Riverside ingredients are present, the album is less atmospheric, less organic, or in a word, good but nothing more.

Polish band Riverside released their debut album 'Out of Myself' in late 2003, one of the very intriguing musical gems from the period of the early 2000s. This first taste of the band provides a fascinatingly soothing mixture of atmospheric rock with progressive elements and occasional metal leanings, all engulfed in a very melancholic, dark and even desperate atmosphere, sitting quite well what bands like Porcupine Tree, Marillion, or Pain of Salvation had been doing at the time. A great offering with plenty of memorable and intense tracks, 'Out of Myself' showcases an even wider range of influences, one of which has to be the more urban-style music of the 1990s, for example, as similar sounds are intelligently embedded all throughout the record. And this comes as no surprise, as band leader Mariusz Duda had been interested in Radiohead, Massive Attack and Dead Can Dance, all very appealing and inventive acts for their times.

Armed with such an array of influences as well as with a desire to put out a work that is impactful and memorable, one could see Riverside's debut album as one of the very brilliant atmospheric rock albums of the early 2000s, also displaying a tendency for a very lush heavy sound, as the band juggles between heavy and light quite engagingly. The record fits very well the overall dark and heavy musical zeitgeist, especially for what concerns progressive music, and the examples are many, including the albums released by the bands mentioned previously. Standout tracks are the 12-minute opening song 'The Same River', a great piece that sets a beautiful tone for the entire catalogue of Riverside, in my opinion, the heavier title track as well as the two parts of the 'Reality Dream' suite are quite satisfying, while the more cathartic pieces like 'Loose Heart' or 'OK' could hardly be overlooked. A splendid debut album, deservedly one of the most celebrated ones from 2003/04!

The sudden and painful death of guitarist Piotr Grudzinski in 2016 plunged Riverside into a bleak and uncertain outlook for the future. And with the thick feeling of that loss dominating the band's core, the Poles-turned-trio decided to develop a heartfelt musical mourning in honour of the absent companion with 'Wasteland' (2018), their seventh album.

'Wasteland' is a transitive hinge in Riverside's career, whose defeatist theme finds a representative correlate in its musical structure, saturated by atmospheres of deep distress driven by the introspective and melancholic voice of Mariusz Duda, as in the intimate "The Day After" with the a capella singing of the band's leader and the shuddering closing violin of guest Michal Jelonek, or in the plaintive 'Guardian Angel', a beautiful melody guided by Duda's acoustic guitars and Michal Lapaj's keyboards, or in the moving intensity of the hypnotic mid-tempo 'Lament' dramatised by its suffocating riffs (probably the best track on the album), or also in the desolate 'River Down Below' and the heartbreaking guitar solo by fellow guest Maciej Meller.

And although this gloom is a constant throughout the album, the band also reserves a space for not disconnecting from their hardened primal vein with the vertiginous 'Acid Rain' and the impulsive 'Vale of Tears', as well as for experimentation with the instrumental 'The Struggle for Survival' with similarities to Steven Wilson's more acidic Porcupine Tree, and with the westernised and synthesised 'Wasteland'.

Finally, 'The Night Before', the affable melody that Michal Lapag's naked piano builds, is the base for Duda to return with his voice to the mournful character of the beginning, and give an expected and disheartened closure to the album.

A new stage was beginning for the band, trying to readjust in the unexpected and challenging scenario that destiny had prepared for them, and 'Wasteland', without reaching the brilliance of the first works, is a very good new beginning.

3.5/4 stars

The debut album in 2004 of the Polish prog metal band Riverside is unparalleled. It's the talk of the town in the entire prog community and if you didn't get it; you can take it from me indiscriminately. Everything is right about the album. "Out of Myself" is full of lyrical melodies, intense atmospheres, controlled power and virtuoso efficiency. How beautiful music can be. Not too exuberant reviewer, Riverside has a kind of modesty in its expressions. Actually, you don't want to compare the band to anything, but that doesn't change the fact that you hear music on the cutting edge of Porcupine Tree and a dark Pink Floyd.

The album opens overwhelmingly with the epic The Same River that sweeps you of your feet in its first seven instrumental minutes with delicious guitar playing by Piotr Grudzinski. The drums of that other Piotr sound nice and loose with some dragging rolls or breaks, while the virtuoso bass guitar of Mariusz Duda takes you to another beautiful level. Meanwhile, the predominantly chord-like keys of Jacek Melnicki build up the tension and then move on to a vocal block of almost five minutes. The song ends with a glorious guitar melody that sounds so incredibly monumental that you start to wonder how long the band can keep up this level.

In the subsequent short title track they show you they can. Although the atmosphere is a lot grimmer, it is unmistakably the Riverside and nothing indicates that the show is over. That's not going to happen either, the band continues to fascinate until the end.

"Out Of Myself" has two quiet songs, I Believe and In Two Minds. They receive nice support from the acoustic guitar played by Mariusz Duda. I really like the melodic vocal line of In Two Minds, it sounds warm and deep. Duda makes a strong impression vocally anyway over the entire album. Sometimes his surreptitious singing is somewhat reminiscent of the way Tim Bowness (No-Man) sings, sometimes absolutely not, then it's more David Gilmour or something like that.

Speaking of the vocals: the album has a beautiful instrumental diptych, called Reality Dream. Especially the first part is of phenomenal proportions. Here the band frolics with neo-prog given the voluptuous keyboard and guitar moments. In this way, the song gets a blissful look towards Pendragon halfway through. The strength of this composition is that the typical Riverside characteristics are nowhere far away, as is very clear in the guitar-oriented second part.

The album also contains the rippling Loose Heart and the two sizzling closing songs The Curtain Falls and OK. Yet listening to this album since February 21, 2016 is no longer the same. On that date, guitarist Piotr Grudzinski died unexpectedly in his sleep of a cardiac arrest. It will always hurt to hear him play.

Orginally posted on www.progenrock.com

Riverside has become quite the household name in the prog rock community ever since their second record of Second Life Syndrome. While they may not be as big as Opeth, Dream Theater, Mastodon, and TOOL, Riverside had proved themselves as a pretty grand metal group from Poland. However, in recent years, I have felt they had become less of the giants they seemed to be in their heyday of the 2000s through mid 2010s, with their last really stellar release being Love, Fear and the Time Machine. Ever since, it has seemed they are playing a safety game, which has continued to their latest of ID.Entity, an album I thought was very disappointing. In fact, I can pinpoint where Riverside started to become less thrilling with their 2018 album of Wasteland.

This would be the first record without long time member Piotr Grudziński, who had been on guitar ever since their debut of Out Of Myself, before his tragic death in 2016. Before getting Maciej Meller of Quidam for ID.Entity, lead vocalist Mariusz Duda took up the mantle as lead guitarist for Wasteland.

While I may not find this album to be the best, I can see quite a number of good things on here. For one, I do enjoy the more mellower tracks of Guardian Angel, Lament, and River Down Below. While I may not think they reach the heights of Time Machine, I still really enjoy them, especially Lament. The more prog metal stuff like Acid Rain, Vale Of Tears, The Struggle for Survival, and the title track also do a good job. Mariusz ain't a bad guitarist by any stretch, creating very nice, and very moody strums and solos that have quite a lot of weight.

I also dig the production. I know some might find it a tad less grand in comparison to Second Life Syndrome or Anno Domini High Definition, but I think Wasteland does have some great mixing, especially within the more longer tracks.

However, speaking of such, I feel as though the tracks never really have all the right strengths for me to really love them. I do like them, but at the same time a lot of them feel weak in retrospect. After Love, Fear and the Time Machine, I was expecting the band to go into an opposite direction from their contemporaries of Porcupine Tree, going into a more contemporary prog limelight, moving away from prog metal, though I can respect Duda for not wanting Riverside to sound like Lunatic Soul. Even then, though, I feel like Wasteland should've been a great opportunity to expand the horizons, creating songs that were both a mix of the mellower contemporary stuff, with the hard edged prog metal. In a way, we did get that with Lament, but none of the tracks really explore such an idea. Either they are mellow and atmospheric art rock numbers, or they are heavy prog metal. The division kind of confuses and disappoints me, as it seemed like the perfect direction the band should've taken, especially with the longer tracks. Heck, I'd say it feels weird for their sound in general, as even before Time Machine, with their heavier, more prog metal oriented records they still managed to spice things up by getting more mellower at times. Look at the title track for Second Life Syndrome or Hybrid Times for example.

The band definitely feel very lost here. While I do not want to blame this on the death of Grudziński, as it feels wrong too, I think in a way his sad passing does play a part. I feel it's like a Syd Barrett leaving Pink Floyd situation. Both Riverside and Pink Floyd lost one of their founding guitarists, with Syd leaving due to drug abuse, and Piotr passing away, causing both bands to try and figure out what they could do from here. Unlike both though, where Pink Floyd decided to do things all weird and crazy with More and Ummagumma, Riverside sat within their own bubble, unmoving like a statue. Though in a world of prog, with nothing but movement, their statue was chipped away, further and further, creating two underwhelming albums, both playing a game of safety in numbers, with ID.Entity being probably their worst record in their catalog in my opinion.

I do hope Riverside can manage to find themselves out of this rubble and find their own Atom Heart Mothers, or Meddle, or Obscured By Clouds. They have made stellar music in the past, especially Duda's other projects, so I know they have it in them. That being said, Wasteland is still a pretty rough album, and while there are things to like on here, such things can still feel quite middle of the road, especially for Riverside standards.

Best track: Lament

Worst track: The Day After

Away from the sonorities of great metal intensity and closer to an intimate and peaceful aesthetic, and even with some insinuations to the accessible tendencies of eighties and nineties pop, Riverside publishes 'Love, Fear, and the Time Machine', their sixth album. A work that has frontman Mariusz Duda as the main protagonist, both for the versatility with which he manipulates his vocal register, taking it from melancholic phrases to whispers that invite complicity, and for his contribution to the melodies accompanied by his inseparable bass.

Using the concepts of love, fear and their connections with the past and the future as leitmotifs, the Poles develop clean and unsaturated atmospheres, with several points of intersection with respect to Steven Wilson's Porcupine Tree, such as the melancholic 'Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened By a Hat? )", which from Michal Lapaj's initial Hammond adds nuances up to Piotr Grudzinski's brief and heartfelt solo, the restful and naked "Afloat" with the almost invisible Hammond and Duda's arpeggiated acoustic guitars, combined with some more accessible pieces such as the expeditious "#Addicted" and the new wave airs of "Discard your Fear".

In an album that rarely pushes the accelerator, the highlights come from the longer tracks: the excellent instrumentation of the plaintive 'Saturate Me' with a good guitar riff by Grudzinski and Lapaj's keyboard curtain, and the nostalgic 'Towards The Blue Horizon' with its incisive arpeggiated beginning, Duda's confessional sobs and an intensity that goes back and forth between acoustic developments and dramatic mental landscapes. One of the album's best.

The final section rounds out the overall concept, with the hopeful, unplugged 'Time Travellers' and the uplifting 'Found (The Unexpected Flaw Of Searching)', a clear counterpoint and optimistic reference to the opening 'Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened By A Hat?)'.

Although it misses a greater participation of the riffs and solos of the excellent guitarist that was Grudzinski, relegated to the benefit of more glacial and less harsh melodies, 'Love, Fear, and the Time Machine' comes out ahead because of the solvency shown by the band in the exploration of new paths.

3.5/4 stars.

I give this band a lot of credit for making an album all about their recently departed guitarist Piotr Grudzinski. How difficult this must have been, especially for Duda who writes the lyrics and sings them. This record is bursting with emotion. Even the song titles, but especially the opener and closer which are just so meaningful. It opens with "The Day After"(Piotr's passing) and the closer "The Night Before"(his passing). I have not felt emotion like this since THE PINEAPPLE THIEF's "Little Man" and to a lesser extent GREEN CARNATION's "Journey To The End Of The Night". Both dealing with the death of a child.

This feels like a record that needed to be made and really it's a one-off in the sense they are a trio not replacing Piotr yet because the three remaining members need to do this together. Yes they brought in three guests with two adding guitar on some tracks and one adding violin on a few songs. Duda's vocals are rough at times, a different style for him but only when he's singing in a reserved manner. These guys are in mourning. Travis Smith nails the art work and we get nine tracks worth 51 minutes.

I do feel this is a four star effort, I mean they really hit some highs here but it's also inconsistent in my opinion. Also it's just too sad for me to even want to play it again. "Little Man" at least had those uplifting moments while "Journey To The End Of The Night" is about as dark an album as I have heard. No light, no hope but they would follow that up with "Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness" an incredible record. Those two are like ying and yang.

So I do have two tracks that stood out for me on this RIVERSIDE record. "Vale Of Tears" for one is just so interesting and I love when it turns heavy 3 minutes in. The next track "Guardian Angel" gives us some light at least early on but eventually I'm reaching for the kleenex. "The Struggle For Survival" is interesting in that it's a 9 1/2 minute instrumental and after 8 minutes I'm thinking PORCUPINE TREE. I feel like there is a ton of meaning in the lyrics for "River Down Below". The lyrics are so emotional on "Lament" and the violin offers that too late to end it.

I love the way the remaining three members honoured their guitarist here on "Wasteland". They certainly dealt with it head on. ONE SHOT decided to make a live album bringing back their original keyboardist but not replacing guitarist James Mac Gaw. A night of emotion no doubt for all in attendance. Keep in mind ONE SHOT is an all instrumental band. A solid 4 stars for album number 7.

"Memories in my Head" is an EP released after the highly successful "Anno Domini High Definition", which returns to Riverside's primordial roots marked by "Out of Myself" and "Second Life Syndrome", and with its more than thirty-two minutes it lacked little more than nothing to become a fully-fledged album. Three tracks were enough to build a short but intense proposal on the basis of atmospheric, dark, intriguing and futuristic scenarios, which combine progressive elements of seventies and eighties heroes, ethereal transitions and heavy chords of the roughest side of the genre.

The pieces are connected to each other by the common denominator of a long gone and missed time: from the disturbing beginning of "Goodbye Sweet Innocence", and its steady but unhurried pace, guided in its development by Mariusz Duda's melancholic voice and Michal Lapaj's protagonic and mysterious keyboards with Arabic airs at times, the raging and superlative "Living in the Past" that shows the overwhelming solvency the Poles are capable of, with mid-tempos dominated by the forcefulness that flows naturally from the distorted guitar riffs of the excellent Piotr Grudzinski, the hypnotic keyboards of Michal Lapaj and the sober accompaniment of the ever-fulfilling drummer Piotr Kozieradzki, in one of the best tracks in Riverside's discography, until the tragic "Forgotten Land", a description of the dramatic fate of a people condemned by their arrogance, where the opening bass lines recall Rush's "Cygnus X-1" and give way to a painful and heartbreaking lyrical narration by Duda accompanied by the whole band until its haunting end.

"Memories in my Head" is a great EP, which was only available at concerts and shortly after fortunately offered to the general public. A jewel in the discography of the band led by Duda.

Excellent.

4/4.5 stars