Riverside

It was in Warsaw, Poland, that four friends, driven by their love of progressive rock and heavy metal, decided to form the band Riverside in 2001, after listening to a Marillion album on a car radio. Mariusz Duda (vocals, bass), Piotr Grudzinski (guitar), Piotr Kozieradzki (drums) and Jacek Melnicki (keyboards), soon decided after several rehearsals to compose their own music and perform live. In 2003, Jacek Melnicki was replaced by Michal Łapaj as the band fine-tuned their debut album, Out of Myself, in the studio. Following its success in their homeland, Riverside were distributed in North America the following year, and followed up with the Voices in My Head EP, then a new album, Second Life Syndrome (2005), which confirmed the Polish band's successful start to their career. It then took them two years to come up with a new effort, Rapid Eye Movement, just after supporting Dream Theater on tour. The next, Anno Domini High Definition, released in 2009, proved a big commercial success for the band, who followed up with Shrine of New Generation Slaves (2013) and Love, Fear and the Time Machine (2015). After Piotr Grudzinski died of a heart attack on February 21, 2016, at the age of 40, Riverside continued as a trio for the album Wasteland (2018). Guitarist Maciej Meller, who accompanies the band on tour, is officially integrated in 2020 for the recording of the album ID.Entity (2023), followed appropriately by a long tour, marking Riverside's return to the stage after the Covid-19 pandemic. In the same year, the Polish band releases the singles "Friend or Foe?", "Self-Aware" and "I'm Done with You", played on a new tour that results in the live album Live.ID (2025), from a concert at Warsaw's COS Torwar Hall.