LOVE, FEAR AND THE TIME MACHINE

Let's start saying that for me this is a masterpiece. I quite like Riverside even without having been a strong fan of the band. I know that somebody considers this album a change in the band's style: less metal and more symphonic prog. Possible, but I can't hear very big differences in style with albums like Second Life Syndrome.

Also, even if I'm not a fan of Steven Wilson, and you can be sure that his hands upon the console are clearly perceived, he has been able to give the band a consistent sound throughout the album without making them sound exactly like Porcupine Tree.

I can't deny that one of the reasons why I'm really impressed by the album is in the lyrics of "Toward The Blue Horizon". This is the title of a Sci_fi novel by Frederik Pohl, but they sound amazingly prophetic; knowing that Piotr Grudzinski is suddenly passed away few weeks after the album's release. Add to this that Mariusz Duda has now in my opinion the most beautiful prog voice after the passing away of Greg Lake.

That song is not the whole album, of course. "Time Travelers" is another intense song which would be enough to make this album worth a purchase, and one which touches me in some strange part of my sub-conscious. So we can say that this is more progressive than metal, but I don't think that Riverside have betrayed their usual public. There are clean vocals only, no screams or growls, but this is not what makes a metal album. It's just a style that this time was not fitting in the songs' economies.

I can't find more words. Surely, listening to it with the awareness that it has been the last album played by Grudzinski, adds some melancholy to an album which can be considered "sad". It's one of the albums I still listen to very often and one of the absolute best of the last three years.