MAGIC WORLD

This debut from Finnish act Riveryman could have been so much better.

Although not innovative in style, the heavily Genesis-influenced variety of symphonic rock present on this album is charming. Simplistic explorations with a strong focus on moods and atmospheres, lots of guitar soloing of the gentler variety in vocal as well as instrumental passages, and floating keyboard layers in the back of the mix - with the odd use of organ at times. This is pretty vintage-sounding neo progressive rock. Spiced up with some shredding in the soloing department and a few instances of riff patterns with slight metal edges to them, a bit of variety is thown in as well, and the songs are generally charming.

However, the vocals are not good. Flat, lifeless, slightly atonal and accented - and rarely even close to being in tune with the melody. And as most of these compositions are marked by many vocal and few instrumental passages, this pretty much ruins what might have been an enjoyable affair.

Neo fans not concerned about vocal performance should enjoy this one though, others are adviced to check out samples of the album before considering purchasing this venture.

I'm a bit bemused by this new act from Finland called Riveryman. Funny thing is I was quite impressed after first listening attempt for the review although I immediately heard there were things wrong here. One of these things is certainly the vocal performance of Tony Riveryman. I hope this man knows himself he's not a good singer otherwise he has a problem. Riveryman is a two man band with a drummer named Pikkis being the other guy. Tony does the other instruments all by himself so I don't think we will see him live very often.

Anyway my being bemused is mainly caused by the following thought: how can a band or person execute so sloppy as is happening here and on the other hand write such interesting songs and invent such nice guitar solos ? I mean if these compositions would be executed by class act bands like Pendrgaon or Skeem for instance we could have had a near masterpiece here. But as it is it's just not good enough. Besides the vocals the guitarplay is albeit not terrible far from flawless and so this is turning out to be a strange experience.

My first thought was that this is an album easy to review but difficult to rate. And that is how it turns out to be in the end. I did this review in just two minutes or so because it's very obvious what to say about it. But the rating is harder. I can understand why Olav gave this two stars and if you approach it by just judging on what you hear I understand and agree. But in that case you deny and ignore the positive side which is the songwriting. Ok, the songs are not written by a genius but I can't call this a boring effort either. The whole thing reminds me quite strongly of French band Longshot,a band that also write long quite interesting songs but execute them in a sloppy way, at least far from smooth or decent. I gave that album (Asylum) 4 stars rounded up from 3,6. But I can't go that far here. I at least will have to send out some sort of warning to the readers to watch out here. Just in case you're not easily put off by vocals and don't care for perfect execution either you could try Riveryman with this release. But if you're a perfectionist, leave it. I would say three stars will do, rounded up from 2,75 everything considered.