Review Summary: New neo-prog can breathe peacefully, there is a great hope
I was recently talking to a friend who asked me if I listen to music that wasn't rock or metal, and I told him about Björk, Latin rock, 90s electronica and even Rosal*a and Kali Uchis. He was a little disappointed because I couldn't name any neo-soul (except Alicia Keys) or pop (although I did say Justice), and I really have a hard time listening to music that doesn't focus on the instrumental, the musicality.
But I also told him that new progressive rock had a lot of these sensibilities, not just in choruses but sometimes in whole tracks. I thought of Sleep Token or even Leprous. And that's how I feel about this new Riverside album, which using influences from funk, electronic music, pop, enriches their progressive rock without taking the spotlight away from distorted guitars, bold rhythm patterns or intricate arrangements but, as Haken is also doing, adding sounds like wind instruments and 80's synth arrangements.
Riverside comes from Poland. Yes, Behemoth and Vader, pure black metal evilness, though for me also from Indukti's progressive metal, which I admire since 2015. And in this case we are again talking about progressive rock and a very innovative, refreshing and daring one, reminding me of Pain Of Salvation's latest works as well as some of Anathema and Katatonia's work, but instead of coming from dark places, having doom or gothic influences, I find this new album, ID.Entity of greater richness and diversity.
Riverside may sound light at times, but the guitars never stop playing, as I already said in a powerful and hard way, but also in combination with keyboards or with a bass that experiments with different colors, that commands, even leads. Steve Harris would like to have songs like that, that orbit so powerfully in the lower notes, but he would lack Flea's vision to achieve what is happening here, a return of the Poles to the adventure of what some have called neo-prog, what I was telling my friend, new sensibilities that are nourished by more and more different sources.
So in ID.Entity we find Hammond organs, rhythmic guitars, acoustic moments, emotional explosions that blow up bridges with drums and guitars, classic rock solos, psychedelia and again, some 80's pop, as heard in the opening Friend Or Foe? and in Self-Aware, where they also dare with some "white ska" a la Police.
It is also a sentimental album, with many moments of acoustic guitar and/or pianos, with whispered vocals, with some sadness and anguish, although it sounds contradictory to what I said at the beginning, but I also perceive joy, celebration or hope translated into more cheerful and fast songs, with enthusiasm.
Conceptually in an album of this time, in which the lyrics worry about the psychological consequences of the new digital identities, disinformation and post-truth in social networks, although it is not the strongest of the proposal.
