ALBUM REVIEW: Eye Of Water – Tideless

Although they may not have a lot of releases to their name, California’s TIDELESS have already established themselves as an incredibly imaginative creative force, and are quite unlike the vast majority of their peers within the US extreme metal scene. Taking death-doom and tying it together with post-rock and shoegaze, their work effectively turns death-doom on its head. The band’s debut album, 2021’s Adrift In Grief, was a great example of their sound, and although it laid some incredibly solid foundations for their future music, it didn’t quite feel fully formed. That album’s follow-up, Eye Of Water, on the other hand, is not just a showcase of a band perfecting their sound, it’s the sound of a band transcending their origins and becoming an inspired and influential act in their own right.

Drowning (19° 40′ 49″ N, 99° 0′ 36″ W), with its hazy atmosphere and shoegaze-tinged guitars, blends soaring melodies and powerful rhythms to create an engrossing sound right off the bat, with its epic feel and repetitive hooks easing the listener into the record and immediately commanding their attention. Fields At Dawn retains the previous track’s angelic qualities, but injects a generous dose of death-doom into the mix, with throaty gutturals, bleak leads and monolithic bass and drums all creating a harsher, denser sound that is a progression, rather than a departure, from the first song’s sound. Faster, fiercer death metal sections begin to creep in as the song gathers momentum, with angular riffs, intricate drumming and a rumbling, meaty undercurrent lending it a sinister edge. The shimmering minimalism that immediately follows stands in stark contrast, providing a crystalline interlude that builds towards a majestic second half that brilliantly combines these softer components with monstrous death-doom, a musical counterpoint that works extremely well, with neither fully taking centre stage, making for an expansive and bombastic conclusion to an exceptionally strong offering.

Oblations For The Sun is a visceral and punishing effort, going straight for the jugular with biting guitar work, frenetic drumming and impenetrable vocals, and peppering in a liberal dose of black metal into the mix. Opaque post-rock passages and spacey keyboards bubble to the surface, giving this song a few spartan, ethereal sections in amongst the rabid and urgent extreme metal backbone, again ebbing and flowing between ambience and aggression seamlessly, with these gradual musical shifts feeling natural rather than forced. As the headier extremity starts to return, it’s accompanied by a dancing, folky undercurrent that adds yet another layer to this already ambitious piece of music, foreshadowing the airy, atmospheric sound that eventually brings this song to its conclusion, proving to be yet another eclectic monolith that is dripping with suspense.

Laurels Of Victory seemingly picks up where the last track ended, with polished guitars and steady drums taking the music back into death-doom territory, albeit with palpable post-rock and shoegaze overtones that shroud much of this in a murky ambience that again adds a beguiling aspect to the rest of the music, tempering the thick vocals and distortion with a slick, dream-like quality. This is, as one of the shorter outings on this record, one of its punchier numbers, and the catchy leads rise more prominently to the fore, serving as a streamlined but nonetheless magnificently inspired take on the the band’s overall sound.

The album’s final track, Lush.Serene.Dissolved, is staggering in its scope and scale, encompassing a lot musically. It’s a slow-burner, morphing from the delicate shoegaze and minimalistic death-doom and gradually transforming into something far more dissonant. With its jarring leads, grating rhythms and bellicose vocals, along with some especially intricate drumming, it’s an oppressive and claustrophobic slab of death-doom, but that certainly doesn’t mean that it isn’t without its lighter, punchier moments too, with the omnipresent post-rock/shoegaze components that underpin this entire album lurking in the foreground for much of this. There’s lots of blistering tempos, forceful and domineering performances and a decidedly sinister edge to this particular track, with a few ethereal interludes serving to accentuate the ferocity of the more searing parts. It’s a gargantuan and bombastic closing effort which shows that, underneath the sublime elements of the band’s sound, there’s the potential for something bleaker and more visceral.

Although there are certainly cases of death-doom bands creating longer form work and being able to keep things captivating, it’s hard to imagine many bands being able to craft nearly 80 minutes worth of music that is thoroughly engrossing, but TIDELESS have managed to pull it off with seeming ease. For a band that is still relatively new, this possesses a stunning amount of imaginative songwriting and experimentation that makes it stand out significantly. It’s got the same sort of quality to it that albums like Mirror Reaper have; it’s clear that the band have gone all in with the writing and recording of this, and they’ve produced an undeniable monolith as a result, an album that will no doubt become a future classic and inspire countless musicians in years to come with its unique blend of styles and influences. With Eye Of Water, TIDELESS have created what is arguably their first true masterpiece, and hopefully it’ll be the first of many.

Rating: 9/10

Eye Of Water is out now via Chaos Records.

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