Rivermaya: Sa Kabila ng Lahat Album Review

Rivermaya: Sa Kabila ng Lahat

I finally got a copy of Rivermaya's latest album. This album is quite pretty hard to get because its availability is mostly limited to Rivermaya's mall gigs, online store of Star Music, or get it straight at ABS-CBN store at ELJ building. So I endured a couple of months listening to online streaming sites like Spotify. It has been 2 long years since the band last released an album, and this one is highly anticipated due to the fact that the band's pioneer bass guitarist Nathan Azarcon has returned to the band that first launched his musical career to mainstream music fame. And what more explosive way than to do the lead vocal chores for the album's carrier single "Manila". Easily the best song in this album. If you are quite familiar with Azarcon's body of work with his post Rivermaya bands (Kapatid, Bamboo, and Hijo), Manila is something that you could have easily heard from his old bands if they were still in existence today. The heavy bass leads is pure Nathan and mixed with Mike Elgar's virtuoso guitar leads and solos, well one can't stop head banging until you neck hurts. Nathan would contribute three more songs to the album, but his influence on the musicality of the band is quite telling as his bass lines is more pronounced in the other songs as well. There's also a haunting ballad that only Nathan knows how to write, the song Mula Ngayon has the bro-mance dynamic with his duet partner (and long time Rivermaya member), Mark Escueta, is a "kilig" moment for long time Rivermaya fans because of the message of the song that speaks about love, loyalty, and bond, perhaps a subliminal message that Nathan is going to be with the band for the long haul?

But while I expected Nathan to take the lead in terms of songwriting for this album, surprise of all surprises, Mike Elgar takes center stage as he sings/contributes four songs in the album. Elgar also takes the center spot in the band's live performances as the pseudo lead vocalist (but this has never been the band's direction in recent years when it comes to having lead vocalists after the past departures of three former lead vocalists). Elgar's song 8 to 5 was released as the second single for the album which is also one of the well written songs in this album. A perfect follow up to for the hard hitting Manila as this song is slower and milder. And as usual, Elgar's guitar solos to these types of songs are such sweet listening to the ears. I actually don't quite remember any songs from Elgar's that aren't hard hitting. Sana Ikaw on the other hand evokes the classic Elgar songs of past, scintillating guitar riffs and solos. The other two (One Step and Sabay Tayo) however lyrically aren't much to my liking but the song structure is still top notch Mike Elgar. Curiously, Mark Escueta only sang/contributed one song (SBN). I mean, Escueta for the past few years have been so active in songwriting and I'm left curious why he only came up with one. SBN is one of those classic Escueta song that we are all familiar with since he became active in writing songs for the band. Feel good easy sounding on a lazy sunday afternoon and the likes. And finally, the last song in the album called Irena totally blew my mind. Penned and sang by Azarcon, the song recalls the fascinating story of Irena Sendler, a polish nurse and social worker who managed to smuggle and saved more than 2,000 infants and children during the World War 2 period in German Nazi occupied Warsaw, Poland.

In totality, I think the album leaves you wanting as it is only contains 8 songs. I have personal issues with albums that contains less than 10 songs, it kinda makes me feel short change. But hey, I guess that's the trend nowadays as recent albums from other artists also contains less than 10 songs. Still, with the advent of online music streaming, we have to be thankful that some of our favorite artists still releases physical albums. Nothing still beats the experience of listening to full albums compared to the "tingi tingi" singles, which more often than not makes music disposable in my own humble opinion. But that's another article for another day!

The new album can be purchased online thru Star Music's Facebook page or you could visit the ABS-CBN store directly to get a hold of the album. But if you are part of the online streaming generation, then Spotify and Itunes are your go to source for this album. You might not want to miss out the ever evolution of Rivermaya.