PROGRESSIVE METAL

With the January 2023 release of ID.Entity, Riverside has not only returned with a strong new album, a new fulltime guitarist, and a world tour that kicked off in my home state (and of course I had to miss it), but also with a renewed sense of artistic purpose. Traveling along a musical spectrum that ranges from quiet, almost ballad-like nuance to explosive metal anger, with multiple stops in between, ID.Entity bleeds emotional verisimilitude amid a broad dispersion of heavy progressive melody.

ID.Entity exemplifies the themes of this record: identity in the digital era. How vision is warped and manipulated by social media. Truth becomes malleable, political discourse becomes weaponized, self-realization becomes anathematic, and the entirety of one's being becomes commerce fodder.

Heady themes indeed, and Riverside delivers them in a powerfully cohesive and engaging album. Their songs reflect these ideas in a thematic concept album that questions and challenges the new realities of this social transition.

Leading off the album with "Friend or Foe?" is a gutsy choice. For starters, the track doesn't sound like anything else on the album. Nor does it sound like a Riverside tune in general. At least, not at first. It's a synth driven 80s pastiche with pop sensibilities of a bygone (but influential) era. To my ancient ears it sounds like something a-ha would have released in their '80s North American heyday. Only when the guitars crunch in during the pre-chorus/chorus do we realize we are in other territory entirely.

So yeah, it's gutsy, but it's the meta aspect that fascinates me. The early/mid 80s was the beginning of the personal computer/online era. Although it took another decade for mass acceptance and then another for social media to take off, the mid 80s was the launching pad for the Digital Age. What a perfect stylistic metaphor for this album's opening track, which delves into the sublimation or obfuscation of self in a virtual world, and the endless parade of masks worn in online interaction.

Plus it's a total pop earworm of the best kind.

"Landmine Blast" evokes the booming, forceful immediacy of crap going sideways in social media. Be it from Cancel Culture overreacting or General Stupidity accelerating. For whatever reason, the wrong words were said at the wrong time, context be damned, and the resulting detonation of outrage rolls on exponentially, without nuance or understanding, or perhaps even with too much of both. The track opens with some country-esque riffing, moving into a strong metal power swell. Middle Eastern melodicism is woven throughout the tune, adding exotic beauty through the crunch and distortion.

You can almost forgive the band for including the cheeseball 'terms and conditions' opening to "Big Tech Brother". Good idea in theory, but in practice, it's a bit silly. Still, it's over in seconds and the keyboard-driven riffing takes over. While the synthetic horns are an odd aesthetic, the transition to Hammonds as the intro ends allow the song to take on a haunting, howling vibe. The song excoriates its title subjects as it puts the adage "when you don't pay for the product, you are the product" to powerful musical effect. The band plays with dynamics to drive their concepts with melodic precision, from quiet piano interludes to atmospheric guitars and organs to evoke an endless digital prison landscape.

"Post-Truth" laments antagonism, hatred, and division, in which the dissemination of truth and verifiable reality becomes refracted through emotion and agenda. Capitalizing on the manipulation of fear, anger, and outrage is big money.

Headline drew attention Then I lost my temper Again

The song ends with a soft piano reprise of the main melody, a plea of hope and reconciliation perhaps? Or is it a normalization of self-righteous outrage? This is the world we live in.

"The Place Where I Belong", at 13 minutes, is the album's "epic" track. In many ways it summarizes the entirety of the record, emphasizing political division, anger, insincerity, hiding identity, being forced into social conformity, and ignorance presented as defining knowledge. The slow, quieter opening erupts at around the three minute mark with a bluesy bass riff. The band briefly breaks out in a strong jam before the verses kick back in.

Duda's vocals vacillate between anger and self-recrimination as he tries to obtain the titular Westphalia, that place of individual balance, self-realization, and acceptance. His vocals, alongside Meller's shimmering guitar melodie, imbue the song with a strength, beauty, and dignity. It's not a powerful "TIME TO KICK ASS! I BELIEVE IN ME!" bit of posturing that erupts with wailing soloes and a thundering wall of rhythm section badassery. This is powerful musical reconciliation that underscores the lyrical recapitulation of self.

"I'm Done With You" takes its fuzz-bass opening and drives into full-on exorcism mode; good riddance to bad rubbish indeed. Through musical urgency the band bids a not-so fond farewell to the patronization of those who insist they have our best interests at heart.

You are not my judge You are not my God You are not my own CEO Why don't you simply shut your mouth And take your poison from my soul Far away

A powerful piece of self-determination, "I'm Done With You" pulls no punches. It segues into the more uptempo "Self-Aware", with a strong central riff, driving rhythm section, and even some elements of pop melodic construction. If anything, it makes a fine reflection of the "Friend or Foe?" opener. There we questioned who we (and others) really are; here the focus is on reconciliation. Unplugging but not disconnecting entirely. We still need that human connection. Musically the song has hints of Signals-era Rush; again bringing that mid 80s milieu back into high relief. We've come full circle in our reflection of the deregulation of human behavior in the digital realm.

ID.Entity was the first "major" prog release of 2023, and as such set the bar pretty high. It presents an exemplary collection of songs that probe the fragmentation of social and individual identity. The album doesn't proselytize, but it doesn't pull its punches either. Change, as it always does, begins with the individual. Riverside delivers this excoriation of the digital ethos in a manner both explosive and measured. ID.Entity is a different sounding album for the band, but not an entirely foreign one and ultimately an engagingly successful endeavor. Welcome back guys!

What is unique is the combination of this style of music with Christian lyrics. A few other good bands deal with Christian themes on a much deeper level--Neal Morse did a spectactular job on "One," among other albums, and Savatage sometimes deals briefly yet deeply with religious themes. "As The World Bleeds," unfortunately, has a much more superficial approach. More thoughtful, meaningful lyrics would have taken this album to the next level.

Complaints about the lyrics aside, this is still great music. Recommended for fans of prog/power metal who don't mind Christian lyrics. A mix of 3 star and 4 star songs, deserving of 3.5 stars overall.

If you buy this, check to make sure you're getting the special edition with the bonus CD. It has some nice acoustic work on it--some original Fates Warnings stuff and some covers--and it's a good listen.

Highly recommended. 4.5 stars.

Each of the nine songs represents one of Dante's nine concentric circles of Hell. Pervy Perkin's music has always been heavy, but they turned up the aggression sharply here to match the dark subject matter.

"Abandon All Hope" opens the album with rapidfire tonal and tempo shifts, ranging from ethereal sound effects to screeching black metal blastbeats to bluesy grooves. Perhaps a bit unfocused, this song nonetheless effectively sets the stage for the rest of the album, demonstrating the band's versatility and creativity.

Following this is the sheer brutality of "The Tempest". Between the breakneck tempo and guttural vocals, this song's opening could have easily been on a Cannibal Corpse album. As the piece progresses, though, the music becomes more structurally complex and varied, morphing into something surprisingly melodic. "Three Throats" is one of the lighter cuts on the album. Still, it's heavy in absolute terms, and the main riff is pretty big. However, the blues and jazz flavors here add some nice contrast to the preceding aggression.

With "Open Casket", the listener finally gets a moment to breathe as Pervy Perkin tone down the energy for a few minutes. It's not a ballad, but taken in the context of this album's onslaught, this is the calmest song here. This is also where jazz tones are the most overt. After that relative idyll, "Cult of Blood" enters as a roaring piece of thrash metal that sounds like it could have been pulled off some alternate-universe version of And Justice for All (with good production). The rhythm guitars chug forward with purpose, solos twist madly, and the percussion is furious.

The sprawling "Malebolge" suite opens in familiar death metal territory with bass-heavy aggression and growled vocals, but this eventually segues into melodicism reminiscent of Fates Warning, or maybe even Queensrÿche. It's really impressive how adeptly Pervy Perkin can jump between such disparate metal styles yet make everything feel coherent.

Comedia: Inferno is an impressive work of songcraft and musicianship. The constant, churning flow of different styles prevents this 68-minute album from ever bogging itself down, but it's not so overwhelming as to be like drinking from a firehose. Pervy Perkin struck a fantastic balance of complexity, depth, and breadth, undergirded by a ton of ambition.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/04/14/album-review-pervy-perkin-comedia-inferno/

Nonetheless, Dream Theater are one of the founders of progressive metal and one of the giants of the contemporary scene. From the early '90s into the early '00s they put out a string of fantastic records, including two of the most vaunted albums in all of progressive metal. So, it's with a sense of obligation that I subject myself to every new release from this band, knowing it will likely be uneven and masturbatory to the extreme.

With all this in mind, I'm pleased to say that Distance over Time, Dream Theater's fourteenth studio album, is okay. It's not a great album by any stretch of the imagination, but it sounds like the band decided to do more than just have John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess instrumentally wank off for 75 minutes. At under an hour, this is Dream Theater's shortest album since 1992. After the indigestible bloat of The Astonishing, I welcome this relative brevity with open arms.

I'd characterize this album as passably forgettable. Nothing stands out, but nothing offends, either. Their 2013 self-titled was entirely forgettable, but it was a much worse type of forgettable. I actively wanted to forget it, whereas Distance over Time merely lacks anything that makes it stand out or grab hold of the listener.

The riffs on this album are some of the heaviest Dream Theater have ever done, and the songwriting felt genuinely adventuresome at points. At other points, however, song structures were irritatingly predictable, and the chug-chug riffs began to get repetitious by the second half of the album.

James LaBrie's voice is still a glaring weak point. He frequently sounds strained, trying to reach the range of his youth. When he recognizes that his strength is mid-range, he's perfectly capable, but his attempts to be particularly intense or intimate come off as amateurish.

There's only one absolutely bull[&*!#] song on this album: the sole ballad, "Out of Reach". Even Octavarium, their last great album, had two total bull[&*!#] tracks.

Despite all this griping and back-handed praise, there are a few genuine high points. "Barstool Warrior" feels like a proper suite with its unconventional structure. "S2N" features some great drumming, and "At Wit's End" is likely the best song on the album.

This album features a bonus track. When I first saw that, I wondered, "Why not just include it as part of the album?" Then I heard it and realized why. It sounds like Dream Theater wrote a song that did not fit in with the rest of Distance over Time at all, but they wanted to release it anyway. So they called it a bonus track. I'm pretty sure it's about a car. This seems like Dream Theater's attempt to write their own "Highway Star", but they're no Deep Purple. They're not really a car-song kind of band. It sounds like they're trying to have fun but they're not entirely sure how to.

I can't really recommend this album. I won't tell you to avoid it, like I would with A Dramatic Turn of Events or Dream Theater. And I can't tell you to give it a spin out of sheer morbidity, like with The Astonishing. (That album is progressive metal's version of The Room, but longer.) Distance over Time is perfectly okay, but it doesn't have anything to differentiate itself or make it stand out.

Review originally posted here: theeliteextremophile.com/2019/03/01/album-review-dream-theater-distance-over-time/

The first real song here (after the very brief introductory piece), "King of Errors," starts this album out strong. Other highlights include the three last songs: the soft piano-driven "Missing You," providing a bit of contrast on an otherwise heavy album, "The Grand Collapse," a long heavy progressive piece, and "The Aftermath," a thoughtful and haunting conclusion.

Highly recommended for progressive metal fans. 4 stars.

An orchestra, a choir, multiple metal and opera lead vocalists--and all packaged together with some great progressive metal. Quality-wise, Sirius B is at the same level as Lemuria. The vocals are the selling point--the mix of opera and metal vocals go extremely well together. The music is varying degrees of heavy, with the orchestra coming in much stronger in some parts than others.

If you're already a fan of Therion, you know what to expect here. Progressive metal that doesn't sound like anything else out there. Actor Patton Oswalt recently said "I love huge prog rock nonsense and I love raw-knuckle punk as long as they both OWN WHAT THEY ARE." Therion knows what it is, and it doesn't hold back. Recommended. 4 stars.

It still manages to be a good album. The musicians are all extremely talented. The music moves quickly, and even if there's not much originality, it is still enjoyable music. "Stringless Violin" is a highlight, as is the instrumental "Immigrant Song," a great creative cover of the classic Zeppelin song.

Malmsteen and Symphony X fans will probably love this. Like cotton candy, it's quite tasty. But like cotton candy, when it comes down to it, there's not much substance. 3.5 stars.

My version is the double album that also includes the album Siriux B, which is not part of this review as it's a separate album. Sadly, this version lacks a CD booklet.

Bombastic, heavy, symphonic, and just a fun album. Progressive metal fans, especially those who enjoy classical and opera elements and those who like more unique music will enjoy this. 4 stars.