SHRINE OF NEW GENERATION SLAVES

Love at first sight? just the title they chose for this album is enough both hooky, interesting and inviting, no happy places here. New Generation Slave opens the album "no I don't have a stomach ache, its just my face" sings an angry Duda while driving the wheels of this unstoppable train with his funky and powerful bass lines, while Lapaj keys bring a not so obvious symphonic feeling to the mix and late late Grudziński floods the atmosphere with his exquisite and heavy playing. Somehow they merge into the second song, The Depth of Self-Delusion, a radio-friendly song that delivers the classic Riverside sound and melody combining tight bass and drums, acoustic and electric guitars, and minimal and eclectic sounds like truing to explain to the listener what's happening and what's about to happen ?"I could be foreign forever to your other land, I could be foreign forevermore to your promise land", exquisite. Celebrity Touch follows with a more heavy rock riffing and feeling to it, showcasing both Piotr's guitar riffing and Mariusz deep vocal performance; again the Hammond comes before entering one of those Porcupine Tree-like atmospheric and heavy musical blueprints. Guitars here are hypnotizing, same as the melodies, kind of dark and haunting but beautiful at the same time? how can they accomplish such greatness in melody crafting? We got used to us strikes in like the mellow song from this album, piano and vocals lead the mood to a more poppy rhythm feel but never abandoning the depth and darkness that Riverside applies to even their more romantic (if any) tunes. Guitar licks and riffing are backstage letting the keys and rhythmic section become curators to the amazing lyrics, "silence fallen between, all the doors are locked, all the words unsaid and we are still afraid of time".

Feel like Falling is for sure (or at least must be) one of the highlights of the album for any new and old listener, any new or old Riverside fan, it just sounds like? it sounds like Riverside. The bass lines are simply all over the place same as the vocal harmonies and different guitar layers, a very powerful song with all the ingredients to become a hit single, even though that's not what the band is looking for when they craft their music, but is definitely one of the easy-listeners from this record. What a guitar player Piotr was, so talented and precise? and after being pulled up by the band with their sound, again they manage to bring us down to earth (and below) with the melodic but obscure Deprived, 8 plus minutes of genius, dark and beautiful genius with a Radiohead-like feel at times but always with the same Riverside sound that simply wraps the listener without ever letting go or breaking the spell?basically away from the world, from this world. Escalator shine is this album's epic, with musical textures a little different from the previous band's work, kind of jazzy and classical, with Duda's bass slowly leading the band into the mid-tempo atmosphere filled with tons of guitar and piano, letting every member of the band to have their 15secs of fame, until heaviness strikes back again and the song enters this early 70's Deep Purple like scenario for a moment, and why not some doom with a Sabbath feel, and the back to the deep and melodic Riverside again, and everything happens within only 1 minute or so, fantastic mood change leading into an not so unexpected ending for the song, like a cicle closing itself without any harm or scars left. Coda brings the album to an end, in an acoustic way? beautiful, melodic and somehow brighter than anything that sounded prior to it, like bringing light at the end of the tunnel? pure magic.