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Riverside - Rapid Eye Movement CD (album) cover

RAPID EYE MOVEMENT

Riverside

 

Progressive Metal

3.80 | 979 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Bonnek
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
3 stars Riverside's third continues their purified blend of Marillion meets Anathema rock. There are some new elements in the sound, but the step forward is too small. The sound is the same, the style is similar and the approach has become rather formulaic now.

There are still a number of great tracks though. Beyond The Eyelids is a decent prog metal epic but doesn't really inspire me. But better songs follow. Again Riverside surprises me with their skill at short catchy song writing. Rainbow Box is a fine and fresh rock song that should rule the charts really. 02 Panic Room is even better and further explores the integration with the electronic wave rock of Depeche Mode, one of Piotr Grudzinski's a favourite bands.

The early highlights are followed by decent but run of the mill Riverside material that never reaches the heights of the previous album. It takes till a next batch of shorter songs till my attention is brought back to the album. Through The Other Side specifically but also Embryonic and Cybernetic Pillow are good short songs.

I happen to own the 2CD issue an that is definitely the version you should get. Lucid Dream IV adds another short instrumental to the Riverside Dream-suite, Back To The River is a nice jam around Shine On riffs from Pink Floyd and the final track, which is strangely enough the title track, is one of the best things I had heard from Riverside till then. Much of their other material had hinted at space-rock and here they finally give it a go. And how! Of course, the references to Tangerine Dream, Pink Floyd and Porcupine Trippy are plenty but it is done simply marvellously.

With REM, Riverside will not challenge the originality contest, but they prove to be very adequate at trying out new directions once in a while. It's no surprise really that exactly those moments are the most inspired of the album. Still, it feels too much like the band strived too much to obtain a certain sound instead of following their hearts and inspiration. Riverside was in need for a makeover. And it arrived in a big way with their next album!

3 stars for the regular version, 4 small stars for the 2cd.

Bonnek | 3/5 |

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