WASTELAND

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