RAPID EYE MOVEMENT

Riverside's acclaimed breakthrough into the progressive world with their astonishing "Out of Myself" was confirmed by the follow-up "Second Life Syndrome", which was even more highly rated than its predecessor. And so the expectations generated with the release of "Rapid Eye Movement", their third album and final chapter of the "Reality Dream" trilogy, were high. And as can happen when you expect so much, the final result may not end up shining as brightly as expected, and there is something of that with "Rapid Eye Movement".

An album that favours psychedelic atmospheres to recreate the deepest phases of sleep, enveloped by Michal Lapaj's keyboards and the impeccable lyrical intervention of Mariusz Duda, who displays a versatile vocal register that goes from whispers, Steven Wilson-style megaphony and some unburdened shrieks in communion with his bass; all this at the service of dark structures marked by the band's work as a whole over individual performances, and which, on the other hand, misses a more intense participation of the excellent guitarist Piotr Grudzinski, of great prominence in the previous albums.

From the auspicious instrumental opening of "Beyond The Eyelids" and its controlled aggression with nods to Dream Theater, the tracks follow one after the other hypnotically, with the industrialised sounds of the strange "02 Panic Room" and the fantastic final section marked by Lapaj's piano and Grudzinski's guitar arpeggios accompanying Duda's peaceful singing standing out, the progressive metal waves of "Parasomnia", the calmness transmitted by the withdrawn "Embryonic" with its beautiful acoustic melody, one of the band's best ballads, and the power of the hallucinatory "Cybernetic Pillow" that compiles in just under five minutes the harsh influences of Riverside.

And this digging through the twists and turns of the mind has its final point with the extensive and very progressive "Ultimate Trip", whose first two thirds show the band very composed, mostly dominated by Lapaj's keyboards, Duda's bass and Piotr Kozieradzki's percussive support, to then be diluted in the last third in an instrumentation that languishes until its closing.

"Rapid Eye Movement" has the enormous responsibility of living up to its older brothers and, although at times it seems to fall short, it is a very good album from the Poles.

3.5/4 stars