Riverside — Celebrity Touch (2012, CD-S)

Poland’s Progressive
Rock shooting stars RIVERSIDE have undergone a highly interesting
and purposeful progression throughout their musical career so far
and should now manage to reach a next splendid height in terms of
dynamic songwriting with their newest, highly anticipated fifth
studio album release “Shrine Of New Generation
Slaves”.

Commencing with densely atmospheric and partly dark Metal
soundscapes on their early steps back in 2001, this quartet
effortlessly struck a nerve with the changing prospects of the new
Prog Metal generation that embraced acts like Tool, Porcupine Tree
or Opeth for their instrumentally technical, yet deeply emotional
and still always powerful, fresh take on the style. RIVERSIDE
quickly morphed into one of the leading acts within the new
European Prog Metal movement with the release of their
“Reality Dream” trilogy, which encompasses the
band’s much acclaimed first three releases, “Out Of
Myself” (2003), “Second Life Syndrome” (2005) and
most remarkably “Rapid Eye Movement” (2007).

Having toured in support of scene-icons Dream Theater as well as
playing several headlining runs all across Europe finally fully
established RIVERSIDE both in the Metal and the Prog-Rock realms
and their latest album release, “Anno Domini High
Definition“, entered the sales charts in Poland at # 1 (Gold
album status by now!), Germany at # 94 and The Netherlands on # 58
upon its release in 2009 to solidify the band’s ever-blooming
momentum within their growing fanbase. In 2011, RIVERSIDE followed
up by releasing a special EP entitled “Memories In My
Head” in order to celebrate the band’s 10th anniversary
of existence and once again toured restlessly all across the world,
with one of many highlights being their appearance on the main
stage of Poland’s gigantic Woodstock festival in July of
2011, a spectacular event attended by more than half a million (!)
people.

Forwarding into the present, “Shrine Of New Generation
Slaves” (or “SONGS” for easier referencing) was
recorded, mixed and mastered through the months of March and June
as well as September and October of 2012 at Serakos studio in
Warsaw, Poland (where also the “Reality Dream” trilogy
took shape) with Magda Srzednicka and Robert Srzednicki.
“SONGS” offers more than 50 minutes of high-class
RIVERSIDE music divided into 8 songs, which don’t just
clearly reflect a further developed, modern take on the
band’s charismatic trademark elements, but also effectively
adds further vibes of the Classic Rock segment as well as jazzy
art-rock bits to the ever-challenging mix that RIVERSIDE has always
stood for, maybe just less standard metallic and also less complex,
without meaning less progressive.

RIVERSIDE’s Mariusz Duda comments on the “SONGS”
effort as follows: “With this release we are trying to prove,
mostly to ourselves, that we can still surprise with something, and
what’s most important — create an album that would become our
showpiece, music-wise and lyrics-wise. We wanted to start a new,
more mature chapter and focused again more on melody and organic
rock groove than before. The title might sound a bit intricate, but
the acronym will definitely explain what we did with our music this
time.»

Conceptually, it is an album as intense and introspective as ever
before with RIVERSIDE, but there is also a strong and very obscure
social component to things this time around, as Duda explains the
record’s theme and title: “It’s based on the fact
that we all hear almost everyday from friends and close people how
unhappy they are, how they hate their jobs, how they don’t have a
time for this or that, how time flies and how they actually feel
like slaves in their lives. I thought it was a good option to write
about that kind of unhappiness and this “new generation
slavery”, where people seem to be unable to take control over
their own lives”.

Don’t miss out on following RIVERSIDE into this next chapter
of their creative process and on making up your own mind about the
intense listening experience that “SONGS” offers as of
January 21st, 2013. A digital single for the track “Celebrity
Touch” on December 17th, 2012 will precede the album’s
release and you can also already feel invited to look out for
RIVERSIDE’s “New Generation Tour” in Europe, as
well as a North American run and another complimentary tour of
other European territories from May onwards in order to support the
release of the new album…