Review: Riviẽre – Passage

Style: progressive rock, post-rock, alternative metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oceansize, Karnivool, Leprous, The Contortionist – Clairvoyant
Review by: Sam
Country: France
Release date: 24 April 2020

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This review was originally published in the April 2020 Part 2 issue of The Progressive Subway.]

In Jonah’s endless list of albums to bookmark, I saw this band being described as “Modern Prog Metal (or whatever Caligula’s Horse is supposed to be)”, which got me intrigued. I love me some C-Horse, and I’ve never heard anything that comes close to their sound. What I got with Riviẽre¹ however, was something that sounded more like a combination of later Leprous and Oceansize (RIP). 

For the longest time I didn’t know what to write about this album, but after listening to it with some friends who are more familiar with post/prog metal than I am, I finally got an idea of what to write. In short, this album is nice, but the songs blur together. Most of the elements to make a great record are there. The production and overall playing is great. There are many interesting things happening rhythmically. It’s kinda like Leprous didn’t use ghost notes on The Congregation. The guitar work is pretty solid as well, bringing in some nice post-y lead playing and pretty thicc riffs every once in a while. They sound almost like sludge metal at points with how thicc they get (see the closer “Shapeless”).

I like the vocals for the most part too. His tone is pleasant, if a bit heavy with the French accent. However it’s also where the record’s problems start. His tone, intensity and vocal melodies stay pretty much the same the entire time. For example the choruses are almost always the same soaring verse repeated twice. This general sense of same-y-ness plagues the rest of the album too. The first two songs are great, but the three after really blend together, having not enough distinguishable traits to separate them. It’s not that they are bad, just not very distinctive. There’s a lot of work to be done in that regard, because it painfully exposes the album’s hour long runtime. The second half of the album is less same-y though and the songwriting gets better, more akin to the first two tracks. “Surface” and “Shapeless” were highlights in particular to me. 

Overall though, Passage is a neat effort. If you’re a fan of the whole alternative/post prog thing, I definitely recommend you give the album a listen. This album shows a band with great potential that isn’t quite there yet. For now, I’d say put a couple of tracks on your playlist. The individual pieces are there, now just the collective.

1. whoever decided it was a good idea to name the band Riviẽre instead of Riviere needs a serious slap on the head. It makes Googling them unnecessarily obnoxious on desktop. ↩︎

Recommended tracks: Wordless, New Ghost, Shapeless
You may also like: idk fam
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | RYM page

Label: Independent

Riviẽre is:
– Arnaud Laffont (vocals, bass)
– Alexandre Berenguer (guitars)
– Nicolas Saravia (guitars)
– Tommy Hercher (drums)