Riverside
Love, Fear And The Time Machine

Where do the Riverside want to go?

The four from Warsaw, raised on bread and Porcupine Tree, left us two years ago with the splendid "Shrine of New Generation Slaves": the band's softer side clashed with the metal impulses never entirely dormant (listen to "Celebrity Touch" to believe). The new creation of the Poles is a bewildering album, different from what they have produced in the past. The warlike aspirations of metal are entirely shelved to make room for a prog rock with a seventies aftertaste, but the modernity of today's "clear sound". In the middle, the call of their putative father Steven Wilson and the influences of Scandinavian bands like Opeth and Katatonia, in their more reflective versions.

Actually, "Love, Fear and the Time Machine" is a much less varied album than one might expect from Duda and company. The aggressiveness of the past has been completely smoothed down and what remains is a prog rock resting on never too bracing sounds: the rhythms are decidedly stretched, and each song works on refinements, with a sound architecture at the same time full and multifaceted but "soft" and calibrated in tones. The voice of Mariusz Duda thus becomes a fundamental element on which to build everything else. An album that is imbued with that underlying melancholy that has always characterized the band, with "Afloat" being the absolute manifesto of the CD, with Duda's bass and voice dominating in a piece with the atmosphere of the end of the world. But that Riverside's great inspirers are the masters of the 70s is clearly traceable from the intro of "Saturate Me", a real dive into the past. The influences and references in an apparently "minimalist" work in its construction are numerous and merge together different musical scenarios. The chorus of "Discard Your Fear" is frighteningly balanced on the edge of dream-pop (the same goes for the concluding "Found"), an identical mood for the start of "Towards the Blue Horizon" which in its 8 minutes still has time to brush up Grudzinski's guitar to pay homage to Porcupine Tree in a Tool sauce during the central phase. The acoustic "Time Travellers", besides reminding us of the sounds of Opeth's masterpiece "Damnation", fits perfectly into this new atmosphere of reflectiveness that Riverside has always possessed but never exposed so prominently as in this chapter.

The question that spontaneously arises after listening and re-listening to the album is, towards what shores do Riverside intend to continue their journey? "Love, Fear and the Time Machine" is an album that wants to wink at new followers by sweetening the sound, or is it the personal transformation of the Riverside-style? Only the future will give us answers. While waiting for them, Riverside’s latest album is still a courageous episode for the Poles, which opens new scenarios and perhaps closes old ones. A work difficult to decode, that truly needs more listens to penetrate under the skin (forgive the banality). Certainly the most "bare" musically of their career, but equally rich in elements and nuances.

1. "Lost (Why Should I Be Frightened By A Hat?)" (5:53)
2. "Under The Pillow" (6:47)
3. "#Addicted" (4:54)
4. "Caterpillar And The Barbed Wire" (6:56)
5. "Saturate Me" (7:09)
6. "Afloat" (3:12)
7. "Discard Your Fear" (6:41)
8. "Towards The Blue Horizon" (8:09)
9. "Time Travellers" (6:42)
10. "Found (The Unexpected Flaw Of Searching)" (4:03)