“Liquid Modernity” in Riverside’s Anno Domini High Definition
“Liquid Modernity” in Riverside’s Anno Domini High Definition

Summary/Abstract: The aim of the article is to provide an interpretation of the album Anno DominiHigh Definition recorded by the band Riverside - a leading Polish representative ofcontemporary rock and progressive metal. The album was released in 2009, and thusoffers an opportunity to take a closer look at the condition of the genre in Poland exactly20 years after the political transformation, all the more so as the main idea behind thealbum, as the band members themselves suggest, was to identify the new problemsposed by the current age of “high technology” and “late modernity”. The aim of thismusical analysis, therefore, is to examine how and by what means these issues areaddressed.Particular attention is paid to the style and form of the music, as well as to the way it isshaped, as these aspects (including, obviously, the lyrics) seem to play a key role in relationto the message of the compositions. The author’s interpretations are complemented byreferences to the concepts of “liquid modernity”, coined by Zygmunt Bauman, and the“psychology of the crowd”, and by setting the album’s message against the background ofthe generational and social changes that took place in Poland after 1989.

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