Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Riverside
Label: Inside Out Records
Release date: 21.01.2013
Length: 50:59
Rating: 5/5
Riverside are among the few standard-bearers of modern progressive rock and progressive metal who just keep climbing, growing, ripening and evolving artistically. Record after record they provoke and challenge themselves, discovering new musical dimensions one evolutionary step at a time and working them smoothly into their self-grown progressive artistry, so it never, not for a second, sinks into the shallows of trend. Few bands today hold such a sharply defined stance of artistic uniqueness and such a one-of-a-kind, instantly recognizable musical substance as Poland’s own Riverside. Poland has always been a region that gave the story of rock some exceptional musical »oddballs«, from Czeslaw Niemen to the supergroup SBB, and then there are Collage and/or Abraxas, if we stick to the »proggers« alone. And Riverside definitely belong in that company.
»Shrine Of New Generation Slaves« – funny enough, the initials of the album title spell out the word S.O.N.G.S. – is a dark, adventurous new record that deepens and widens the band’s fresh sonic and production foundation, which with »Anno Domini High Definition« already moved a long way from the first three studio albums and reached a higher level of quality. We can safely say that Riverside, alongside Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree, side projects and solo albums included) and Opeth, are the main ambassadors of the new wave of bands that set the ground rules for where progressive rock goes in the new millennium. With their work they keep proving how remarkably flexible and many-layered their outlook is when the talk turns to taking in and passing on any piece of information from the endless musical universe. Put simply, with their creative continuum Riverside prove at every moment that you can brush aside, with feather-light ease, the pathetic notion that everything in rock music was said a long time ago.
Unlike »Anno Domini High Definition«, the new album flirts more intensely with the retro prog-rock urges of the seventies. Sonically it’s not as experimentally challenging as its predecessor, but it’s still different enough to be a new, complete musical entity in the Riverside picture. As said, the guys have almost completely dropped the experimenting with sound samples and programmed loops that sit so well on the fantastic predecessor »Anno Domini High Definition«. In many sections of this highly demanding and complex piece of work, the new album instead uncovers the power of the fateful chemical bond of that classic dialogue for building a wall of sound, guitar riff versus keyboards! This is the retro sound of seventies rock culture, one that will feel close to fans of Uriah Heep and Deep Purple too (the middle instrumental section of »Escalator Shrine«, where a wild moog solo is of course not missing). In their arrangements the keyboards often go for the classic sound of Hammond organs. That gives the album a firm, hard-sounding grip, as the opener »New Generation Slave« already makes clear, along with the tighter-sounding, heavily metalized parts of the album (the song »Celebrity Touch«).
What makes the Riverside story so special, besides the outstanding instrumental camaraderie, is Mariusz Duda’s voice. It carries a strong note of melancholy throughout, backed by a sense of shattered illusion that brings on an openly rebellious suppression of anger, which in turn generates reactions of denial and rejection. In other words, the self-isolation of the individual. Mariusz’s vocal is clean, fragile, extremely sensitive, even passionate when the musical form and the poetry demand it, yet in places cold and, as such, alienated. Exactly what an album with this title needs. It would sit perfectly in the musical world of bands like (the newer) Opeth or Porcupine Tree, select British neo-prog acts, or the »stripped-down« kind of grunge band. Having said that, the overall atmosphere of the new Riverside album is also close to the gloomy, atmospheric output of neo-prog rock heavyweights Porcupine Tree and the newer Opeth. You can’t get around the extraordinary sensuality and sensitivity in the delivery of Mariusz’s poetry. That’s the main and fundamental appeal of the new Riverside album, which slowly but surely grows on your heart. This deeply felt vocal interpretation of the verses will, with every new spin of the album in your CD player, evoke different emotional stimuli and a different response in you (new and ever new mental states). It will stir your imagination, widen your mind, make you ask yourself plenty of questions, and all this information on the album, with its truthfulness, is served through the prism of the vocal interpretation so exquisitely that it will suck you into its unique musical world in an instant. In an instant you’ll be part of it.
The dose of psychedelic flavor can’t be escaped this time either. There are sequences that, in greater or lesser measure, generate the transcendental-cerebral culture of atmosphere-building found in the music of acts like Porcupine Tree (»The Depth Of Self-Delusion«), especially the compressed-sounding guitar lines, close to the guitar sound on the Porcupine Tree album »Deadwing« from 2005), then Pink Floyd (»Celebrity Touch«, the closing sections of »Escalator Shrine«) or even Marillion (most of the organic, landscape-like backing that the vocal interpretation leans on in the superb song »Deprived (Irretrievably Lost Imagination)«). As mentioned, besides the sensitive vocal lines, a key generator of these little gems is Piotr Grudziński with his guitar sound, which delicately fills the available space of the instrumental sequences with guitar lines. They carry an exceptional melodic payoff built on just a few notes, backed by a remarkable »sustain« effect, which co-generates the strong cerebral-psychedelic moment of the album. It’s an inherited approach to guitar playing, known from the hands of wizards like Steve Hackett, Andrew Latimer, David Gilmour, Steve Rothery and of course the already mentioned Steven Wilson. They’re all Brits.
This is an album that will thrill you with every listening round, because with every repeat it crawls a little deeper under your skin. It’s a true progressive album. It creeps into your ear slowly. It carries an exceptional blend of the building blocks of the sonic picture, a full-blooded balance between melodic catchiness (which you have to take in and unravel yourself; it’s a demanding album, not for everyone) and the artistic exposé of a complex string of figures that doesn’t, not for a second, succumb to the »fragmentation« of how things unfold. It keeps the red thread running. It’s an album that will fill you with energy even years from now, when you take it off the shelf of your CD collection and pop it into the player again, because it’s clear from the start that it will stand the test of time and take its place among the most prominent achievements of musical art of all time. There aren’t many albums like it today, and you can easily miss it in the aggressively served heap of musical ballast. With this album Riverside have once again surpassed their predecessor, reached a new point in their artistic development, masterfully risen above the challenge of a new artistic trial and come out of the story as artists who, together with a handful of other adventurous acts of the progressive world, dictate the “ideological melting pot” of progressive rock culture in new times and drive its development. You simply can’t get more genuine and natural than that. This is an album that will flat-out blow you away with its flawlessly original delivery of a musical message.
Line-up
Mariusz Duda – vocals, bass guitar
Piotr Grudziński – guitar
Michal Łapaj – keyboards
Piotr Kozieradzki – drums
Production
Riverside
Track list
1. New Generation Slave (4:17)
2. The Depth Of Self – Delusion (7:39)
3. Celebrity Touch (6:48)
4. We Got Used To Us (4:12)
5. Feel Like Falling (5:19)
6. Deprived (Irretrievably Lost Imagination) (8:26)
7. Escalator Shrine (12:41)
8. Coda (1:39)
