Band: Riverside.
Country: Poland.
Disc: Wasteland.
Year: 2018.
Label: InsiteOut Music.
The last goodbye to a friend.
It is not a secret the great tragedy that the band has gone through the last years, after the exit in the market of "Fear, love and the time machine" of the 2015 and the deserved commercial success obtained by that work, the guitarist Piotr Grudzinski died due to an unexpected heart attack in his 41 years of life, which raised doubts about the continuation of this musical project and we had to wait until 2018 to have the definitive answer.
While it is true that Riverside are still alive; I must emphasize that their musicians are no longer the same, not because they have made changes in their ranks (they keep the same alignment since its inception), but now they are marked by a loss that has made them go from a quartet to a trio.
Wasteland is the darkest work published by Riverside by far and whose sound recalls proposals more in the vein of "Pink Floyd" or "A Perfect Circle", the pieces use acoustic guitars, pianos and violins, the electric guitar gives prominence and instead highlights the bass over all instruments, the latter being responsible for achieving a dense atmosphere and sadness, in general the music is well taken care of, well produced and its compositions are very specific, without falling into instrumental histrionics which often characterizes the "prog" bands.
With respect to the songs presented here, I must say that all are good, but if you ask me which are the most outstanding, I'll take these four: The rocky "Acid Rain" that inside its dizzying rhythms and dark atmosphere makes us fall in account of how this whole album is going to sound, the moving "Guardian Angel" very much like "Leonard Cohen". The instrumental "The Struggle For Survival" which are 9:32 minutes of pure post rock where all the instruments shine and finally and the most important in my opinion "River Down Belong" where the influence of Pink Floyd in works like "Wish you were here "is more than evident.
In general "Wasteland" is an elegant and profound work that invites those who listen to it to take a moment of introspection and reflection, it is the perfect last goodbye from the now trio of Riverside to his fallen comrade and a disc of transition towards a new musical direction, a good addition to your 2018 collection.
8/10
Line Up:
Mariusz Duda – Bajo, guitarras y voces.
Piotr Kozieradzki - Percusion.
Michal Lapaj – Teclados.