TIDAL rose from the mouth of the Tawe in the summer of 2008 with the solid idea of fusing stalwart emotion-driven & groove saturated riffs with a melodious blend of all-powerful drum fills and characterful vocal melody lines. Four young rock-loving guys with a sense of purpose – and a burning passion to create something truly monumental.
Their début album ‘What Will Remain…’ released in the summer of 2012 hints at what they have only just begun to achieve … and what they set out to do…
Starting off with ‘Lost In Thought’ – with hunks of megalithic chords and earth-shattering crashes of guitars (from Adam Vaughan) – these are regularly pounded by pin-point accurate artillery drumming (from Joe Wilkes ) and thumping bass (Joe Lewis.) The searing hot vocal from Adam Payne growls at your feet like an unfed thundercat. It’s glowering and glorious. Smoky classic rock… just the way you want it.
‘Caged Bird’ wriggles like a live snake in a hot pan. It has plenty of slack-hipped flounce. The rhythmic vocal peppers out like sticky shot from a blunderbuss. And the guitars provide a smouldering smoky background. Then ‘The Light That Blinds’ comes at you like a dangerous truck out of the dark. It rushes at you with deadly intent. A great wave of bruising tonnage.
‘Like The Wind’ has a Seventies sounding pace to it. Even the “In the dead of the night…” lyric sounds like something you would expect from Blackmore’s Rainbow. So we get sleek sounding melodies, razor sharp guitars, sophisticated rhythms and those Graham Bonnet style vocals. Maybe not so lucid as Graham’s – it’s fair to point that out – but the potential is there.
‘Beautiful Ugliness’ is a biker’s number. A throbber and a buzzer. You can almost hear the splash of sump oil on this one. And ‘Behind Closed Doors’ is more cerebral. With a nylon guitar that smoothly lingers in your mind for hours after first hearing it. This is sensual and sublime. And the transitory quality gives way to the rumbling sounds of ‘Can’t Turn Away’ that comes up next. This track is raucous and addictive. A huge riff scrapes around near the bottom of the song – like a kraken clinging to the hull of a ship in distress. But on the high deck, the song rises like sea-spray in an enchanted ocean. It is perfect in every way.
‘Rain Dance’ is about the rain-making rituals that have a blessing and a purpose in so many cultures. It has a muddy swamp consistency to it, like a dark fabric flapping in the oil. Then ‘Guilt Trip’ rises like a splendid moon-flower – from a rocky plain. The incredibly beautiful acoustic guitar-work actually reminded us of Steve Howe (Yes) – in fact the whole piece was reminiscent of something soft that you might find on the ‘The Yes Album’.
After the bubbling riffs of ‘The Tide’ with its simmering eruptions and enhanced vocals, we get to the final track on the LP ‘Flowers On The Battlefield’. This begins with an incredibly complex maze-work of sulphate drums coupled with low riffs that sound like ripples of oxidizing acid escaping from deep sea thermal vents. It’s an incredibly complex piece. With flaring acidic guitars and drizzles of sentiment. The chorus “Could you love me / With integrity?” is perfectly balanced and organic in substance.
This is a fully matured album of grace and majesty . Dance with it. Laugh with it. Smile with it. And bang with it. It’s exactly what you need . Right now.
– © Neil_Mach October 2013 –
Link:
https://www.facebook.com/tidalband
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