Label: Inside Out Music
Release date: 06/15/2009
Production: Riverside & Szymon Czech
Album length: 44.44 min
Riverside are a remarkable addition to the progressive scene and a real breath of fresh air, especially at a time when the prog metal movement in particular has lost a bit of its relevance and is short on fresh blood that draws from the well of its own creative inspiration, the one true guarantee of a unique, recognizable identity. “Anno Domini High Definition” is Riverside’s fourth studio album, and with it the guys take a new step forward in their own unique engraving of musical artistry. It doesn’t just confirm the band’s uniqueness once again, it widens, deepens and sharpens its existing landmarks, lifting them to a higher level of quality and a new musical form.
The Poles have been cultivating their recognizable character since the very start of their career. Since the debut. And right from the beginning they staked out some trademarks with their approach that are unmistakably theirs. First, there’s the vocal, which has a color all its own; second, and perhaps even more important, a rich, massive wall of sound that guarantees a special, gloomy, cataclysmic atmosphere, often reinforced with programmed samples, in a witty, simple, honest and at the same time extremely elegant way, though one that can blow this trademark of the band up to bizarre proportions.
Once again we get to revel in the richly arranged, layered sonic backdrop that holds up and supports the vocal. Alongside the dynamic, lively burn created by the metal guitar riffing, Riverside loosen up those guitar phrases with sound effects and programmed samples, which can serve up the illusion of polyrhythm, but above all broaden the band’s expressive range, since they’re a key creator of the dramatic mood, of the high intensity that never lets up on the album. In this arranging department, “Anno Domini High Definition” is a step up from the band’s previous three albums. The keyboards at times reach for the sound of organs, which with their harmony further fill out and widen the spectrum of the album’s sonic picture.
There are no misfires with Riverside. All the building blocks coexist on the same wavelength, communicate brilliantly, and shrewdly trade off dynamic switches in a wave-rich, true-to-life atmosphere, where the vocal sermon comes alive damn successfully in such a united, mutually compatible weave of instrumental characteristics. This morbid atmosphere, charged with melancholy, which isn’t hard to pick up in Polish bands in general, should be tailor-made for fans of English “mourners” like Porcupine Tree on one side, or, in diametrical parallel, even a band like Arena (in its heaviest production version). Of course the stuff is made from a different dough, but the feelings it stirs up in the listener create fitting correlations between the bands. In the end, only the final vibe counts. It doesn’t matter how you get there. What matters is that it gets under your skin and convinces you that the game is real this time.
Two tracks stand out on the album: Left Out and Hybrid Times. They’re also the longest ones. Their extended instrumental passages follow the mosaic puzzle of the songs like clearly distilled motif fragments that fit together like key and lock. So it’s precisely these parts of the songs that grab all the attention in Riverside’s playing, where the band sounds especially convincing in its mastery of building mood by stringing together many leading motifs. The flow of riff-driven burn, rhythmic turns that deftly negotiate between heavier rhythmic textures and trivially defined ones, and the colorful use of keyboards add up to material that will suit music gourmets down to the ground, and they’ll be able to enjoy it for a long time, lifting its “veils” one by one.
The band often creates contrasts by setting the sound of organs against lively guitar riffing, or, in parts where the guitar riffing loses primacy, by setting more classic keyboard sounds and programmed samples against a sharp, voluminous and melodically exploratory bass line. In this respect Hybrid Times is the absolute winner of the record, especially in the part where the band flirts with the discoveries of “goa trance” music itself. Constantly on the edge of provocation, smashing established frameworks, setting new boundaries and discovering new musical horizons.
Besides Hight Times, the middle instrumental section of Egoist Hedonist (a definition of a Slovenian politician for Anno Domini 2010) is no less provocative and unique in nature, where, alongside the aforementioned “trance” sampling (in a tasteful shade), the band throws in a motif with a woodwind assault, which in Riverside’s hands once again effectively stirs up the dynamics and keeps the listener in suspense, wondering what on earth awaits in the next chunk of the song. The unpredictability factor that fans of progressively minded metal or rock crave is fantastically magnified and put front and center on this record.
The vocal is fully immersed in the verses. From subtle melancholy it can shoot up in a moment into obsessed screaming, even fire off the occasional “growl”, stringing together many emotional states that come across as astonishingly real. The guys deepen the atmosphere further by having the vocal use “echo” sound effects.
One more thing. Riverside do offer a cross-dialogue between guitar and keyboard soloing, but they stay true throughout to a vow to the lofty mood they follow, and they can’t betray it. So you’ll never witness a machine-gun spray of notes born out of heavy music-school polish.
“Anno Domini High Definition”, as Riverside’s fourth studio album, is by far the band’s most challenging, most expressively rich, most complexly structured album. At the same time, it’s thrilling how they managed to capture in the studio such truly morbid blackness, which leads the album’s basic mood front and center. That gives it a common thread, and despite all the diversity of sound and arrangement, a compactness, a clearly defined shape and a feeling that Riverside have reached a stage of artistic development where the band members breathing “the same thing” has hit its creative zenith. An album I deeply recommend to the most spoiled music consumers. Let’s just hope Riverside keep spoiling us for a long time to come, in this peak period of their own artistic creativity, just like they do with “Anno Domini High Definition”. A band that’s practically bursting from being warmed up to just the right temperature of working suspension.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 10 / 10
Track list:
1. Hyperactive (5:45)
2. Driven To Destruction (7:06)
3. Egoist Hedonist (8:56)
4. Left Out (10:59)
5. Hybrid Times (11:53)
Line-up:
Mariusz Duda – vocals, bass guitar
Piotr Grudziński – guitar
Michal Łapaj – keyboards
Piotr Kozieradzki – drums
