MEMORIES IN MY HEAD

Memories In My Head is a 3 piece EP by the Polish band Riverside, this is a short one yet very complicated and loaded with a lot of a kind of new sound which at least I never heard before.

This great EP starts with some kind of a strange sound of a fan or something like this with some spooky haunted voices at the background, it is the beginning of a piece named " Goodbye Sweet Innocent " it gets you into a very psychedelic and dreamy atmosphere which is created by a lot of strange alien-like sound effects, an acoustic guitar enters with some sounds at the background, the guitar continues playing the same riff over and over as a clean vocal enters, a vocal that matches the song perfectly, like a kiss from an angel. The drums enter with some ride cymbal and then continues to a really interesting yet simple drumming rythm that is played over and over along to some vocal and guitar, the chorus enters then fades into a melancholic acoustic guitar picking of the main riff, which you can already recognise now, then you can hear how the song gets back to the verse and then enters the chorus again, so that the song got no special structure. After all of that it enters to a loud bass line along to some organ kind of music that plays something that matches the bass line perfectly. An aggressive new guitar riff enters along to the organ and creates a really melancholic, dark atmosphere. the lyrics of this piece are a full new theme to talk about, the way that all the lyrics are crafted into one piece without any places that seem too strange, and even if there are some places like that, it is a "good strange", the lyrics are contributing to the dark, dreamy atmosphere of this song.

The next piece is "Living In The Past" ( No, we are talking about Riverside not about Jethro Tull here) , is a very well thought song with a calculated build which blends in from the first track of the album to a new atmosphere even though it reminds of the first one. The song enters a pure gold melancholic guitar solo that starts with some volume swells, this solo includes a very little amount of guitar notes but it is really well calculated, and reminds sometimes of David Gilmour's guitar solos that are very full with emotion and feelings, with maybe less technical stuff but the emotional parts include more theory and guitar knowledge, you feel that the guitarist of Riverside really knows his guitar very well and fingers the right frets in the right time to create a very emotional delight sound. The vocals enter after the solo with some organ, bass, and more instuments, the vocals here are a little more vibrating and aggressive. The song enters to a kind of chorus with some breaks and guitar+organ riffs which enter an egyptian scale interesting fills after some dreamy singing of the vocalist. A sudden break gets us to a more quiet part of the song, along with some clean beautiful vocal. Another guitar solo came, this time it is a little less prolonged than the first guitar solo and it includes a little less emotion in my opinion but it is a very powerful solo that continues the song atmosphere, the song enters a more aggressive part that you can hear by the vocals that are now more throaty, it enters a very interesting guitar+organ+drum section, and then an organ solo begins, it reminds me a lot of 70's hard rock organ sound. it is a song that the instruments are very bold in and it creates a very dreamy and quiet atmosphere, that sometimes evolves into something fantastic that we never heard before, like clean and dreamy vocal along with some very heavy guitar riffs and a fast and dark drumming that blasts your heart.

"Forgotten Land" is the name of the next track in this stunning EP, begins with some bass pulses of the same note over and over and quiet but haunting high pitched guitar sounds, the drums enter suddenly then the vocal comes, the vocal in this part reminds a little of Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson's singing style because it is vibrating bravely. the song build into one craft work of a lot of landscapes, different ones, with a sometimes quiet, but sometimes aggressive parts of the song. There are some phrases in the song that are really catchy because you can hear the vocalist, like, screaming the phrase into the microphone with a lot of emotion, those phrases include "faster and faster, higher and higher, great temples of gold glitter in the sun" or "How quickly they die! How quickly they turn into dust" those were some really sudden and a surprising moments. I think that the lyrics are talking about the ancient greek mythology and empire. A little after that, the song enters an instrumental part with some guitar, bass, drums and more this is a very interesting part, and it includes a lot of soft guitar volume swells or bends and more special guitar effects that really can give only good to the song atmosphere, the organ enters with some riff that is played over and over with some changing sound that gives a kind of psychedelic atmosphere, then fades slowly into the end of this brilliant EP.

That was the first time Iv'e ever listened to Riverside and I am very surprised, this EP gave me goosebumps when I heard it and I had to listen to it once more just to be sure about what I wrote in this review and to be surprised once again. I usually like the progressive metal sub-genre less that the progressive rock sub-genre but this EP was a really warm welcome to Riverside's sophisticated and interesting sound, one more step into the prog world. I might even consider buying the EP because it was really one of the best new things that iv'e listened to on the past few months, I recommend listening to this piece without doing anything else at the time, and just listen and think, like you should do with every high quality progressive piece. You can get easily used to the dark melancholic atmosphere in this album but can be a little depressive because it makes you think a lot after you finish listening to this, so please be aware.

I would give it 85/100