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Polish prog metallers Riverside are back with their new full-length album ID.Entity released worldwide via InsideOut on January, 20. The new LP is the first with Maciej Meller as a permanent member on guitar, after the tragic death of the band’s original guitar player Piotr Grudziński in 2016. The rest of the line-up is completed by Mariusz Duda (bass, vocals), Piotr Kozieradzki (drums) and Michał Łapaj (keyboards), who have now been playing together in Riverside for over twenty years.
Despite the remarkable stability in the band’s line-up, ID.Entity shakes things up considerably as far as its sound is concerned, and it is probably one of the most unique and diverse albums in Riverside’s discography so far. Fear not, though: the band’s sound is still firmly rooted in that special hybrid of prog rock and metal that Riverside have been perfecting for more than two decades now. The songs strike a great balance between accessibility and technical complexity. The structure is rich, with multiple interconnected sections and returning motifs, but there are always prominent melodic lines to guide the listener through the ebbs and flows of each of composition. There are also plenty of staccato riffs and intricate polyrhythms that prog fans can sink their teeth into, and a very prominent bass sound for the pleasure of 4-string enthusiasts. The playing is sublime as always by all musicians involved, with Michał Łapaj’s keyboards striking me as particularly inspired on the new songs.
So far things may feel familiar. However, there are also some clear departures from the sound Riverside developed in previous records. The new songs are much more upbeat and uptempo than usual, shaking off that dense sense of melancholy that had almost become a hallmark of Riverside’s albums, especially the last few ones. The sound is also slightly more metallic and heavier, throwing us back to the early, hard-hitting Riverside’s LPs. At the same time, the band here experiments with a vaster array of non-metal influences than in any of their previous albums. There are 80s synthpop references surfacing at various places through the LP, more obviously on opening track “Friend or Foe?”. In a few tracks, I also hear neoprog influences - Marillion in particular (“The Place Where I Belong”, “I’m Done With You”), while “Self-Aware” even digresses in reggae territory, if you can believe it.
Dazzling technical playing, a broad set of influences, and lots of proggy adventurousness to placate our nerdiness are definitely among the many strengths that ID.Entity has to offer. However, if I have to be honest, the new record does not come without weaknesses. Two are bothering me particularly. First, the album sounds a bit like its cover image looks: fragmented. There are lots of great moments here and there that do perk my ears, but somehow I can’t seem to find the glue that holds all these little pieces together. Sometimes, it is just a matter of the band cramming too much in too little time: this is especially the case in the shorter tracks where often one does not have even the time to get to know a riff or melody, that Riverside have already moved on to the next one (“Post-Truth”). But things do not always feel smooth even in the longer tracks. The 13-minute “The Place Where I Belong” sounds a lot like 3 separate songs stitched together into one for the sake of it, and it fails to carry momentum from start to finish. I gave quite a lot of thought to what I might be missing, and it seems to me that the new songs do not always manage to create a consistent emotional red thread that can connect the various themes together and ultimately engage and engross the listener. The music does ebb and flow, but the emotional tension remains disappointingly flat for a lot of the album’s duration.
The album’s concept may be partly the culprit here. ID.Entity focuses on social criticism asking important questions about identity and technology in a post-truth world riddled with fake-news that spread on social media like the plague. It’s a controversial and difficult concept, and Duda’s intelligent lyrics make for an interesting and at times thought-provoking read. However, I feel that the concept may have somehow hijacked the creative process here, ultimately stealing the poetry out of it. It is almost as Duda’s need to clearly convey the message took priority over the musicality and poetry of what he is singing. There are moments in the album where his lines simply have too many prosaic words to make for compelling song lyrics or even for decent lines to sing. Snippets such as “Everyone’s divided/extreme right or extreme left/that’s the only choice”, “And this goddamn anger/coming from every corner/I am not surprised/not happy either/because how much can you bear being fucking lied to”, or “You are not my own CEO” should give you an idea of what I mean. I find myself constantly snapping out of the album’s flow and mood because of it, which contributes to my struggle to get emotionally involved with the music.
Ultimately, and it pains me to say this, ID.Entity is a record that was interesting to spin for the purpose of this review, but that I did not feel attracted to return to for more after each spin. There are only a couple of songs that I genuinely enjoy listening to repeatedly: “Friend or Foe?” (perhaps the best track here), “Big Tech Brother” (but I really have to ignore the annoying fake-robot voice at the start of the song) and “Self-Aware” (though the reggaeton part is a tad jarring). This does not mean that ID.Entity is a bad album, and in fact I suspect that if you are not too bothered by its emotional dryness or the lyrics as I am, you may enjoy this quite a bit as the LP contains a lot of strong music and great playing across its 53 minutes. Overall, while I predict that ID.Entity will divide opinions and is not likely to end up at the top of many people’s favorite Riverside LP list, it is certainly yet another high-quality release from the Polish band, and the start of a new chapter that I will eagerly continue to follow.
[Originally written for The Metal Observer]