OUT OF MYSELF

If I has written this review some years ago, my appreciation had been close to 5 stars... But time passes and now I have the chance to compare this promising first Riverside album with their later discography.

Perhaps this one is a very succesfull effort in order to built a powerfull list of songs, it's a little weal than other Riverside albums. Even when I really love and enjoy songs of high quality such as "The Same River", "Reality Dream II" or "The Curtain Falls", there's some lack of originality between notes. Here, Riverside sounds for several minutes like a bunch of other pretencious prog metal bands who built their music on technical skills over the epic moments reached by the whole band.

But in between the personal appreciation of this reluctant prog metal fan, I found concret signals of a band in search of their own style and later albums are proof of this search. But the signals in "Out of Myself" are very clear in this way. Enough to listen tracks like the mysterious, soaring and for moments pretty heavy "The Same River", the powerfull instrumental "Reality Dream II" or the heartbreaking ballad "Loose Heart" to feel that Riverside attempts to raise an unique kind of music.

The mix between some floydian passages (such as in "The Curtain Falls") with some power metal irruptions (such as in "Out of Myself") becomes in a trade mark in the late discography of Riverside, beside the awsome vocals by Mariusz Duda, nowadays, one of the most talented frontman in the prog music scene.

At last, a very respectable first effort, but looking backward, far away of Riverside masterpices such as "Second Life Syndrome" or "Shrine of a New Generation Slaves". 3.5* to me...