Made into metaphysical warriors through loss and love these hoary, bellowing-in-grief creatures go on combing the softness of watery landscapes in heavy-lidded search for lost limbic conjoin. In foggiest envision of hereafter, a drain down toward the aesthetic pleasures of life after death, they’d carve slow their idea by way of prose in painful reveal of greying points of view. Both sentiment and savage emotional rupture create unsettling radiance as San Diego, California-based shoegaze/death-doom metal quintet Tideless arrive with this second pass at their ambitious concoction of forms. Applying the hum-drum drift of maudlin rock guitar textures and groaning-loose movements to ultra-specific taste in extreme metal may not be brand-new in modus yet this sophomore full-length album growls and shimmers in creating its persona-yet-exaggerative brand of alien reverb as the longform stretches of ‘Eye of Water‘ move independently, grotesquely sweetened by transcendental muse and existential lurch alike. The excitement to be found here is in the testing of boundaries, the taxation upon either side of two extremes as they merge in seeming earnest taste for both realms. Though this process of death and the sluice into the end ultimately errs on the side of firmament, almost presumptively ethereal in its greater narrative, there may very well be enough morbidity infused into these extended scenes to engross and disgust the already axe-open mind.

Tideless formed circa 2014 between guitarist/main composer Arturo Gaitan (ex-Morbid Gods) and the multi-talented Kyle Armendariz of Xantam and Seraphic Disgust and for the first couple of formative releases the line-up would shift to accommodate the unique style that’d been brewing. On the band’s first demo tape (‘Sea of Tears‘, 2016) their sound figured a pathway between early Katatonia-esque death/doom metal, shoegaze and the more atmospheric aspects of The Chasm (who some might recall had their own prog-doomed beginnings) before quickly recognizing their longform pieces and focus on shoegaze/post-rock created their most successful movements, as evidenced by their first EP (‘Eclipsed Blood Horizon‘, 2017), a messy proof of concept. So, the Slowdive guitar drain works for black metal, why not atmospheric death/doom metal? Well, to be fair This Empty Flow was a thing, eh? Otherwise folks’d certainly accused ‘Nothing But the Whole‘ of a similar combination on paper a decade ago but, anyhow… these folks arrived at an entirely different mechanism on their debut LP (‘Adrift in Grief‘, 2021) a release which’d gotten very little push at press and initially hit with an edition of like, thirty. The combination was original enough and they’d obviously had enough experience with both death metal and depressive cinematic rock niches to represent the collision of worlds on that debut and the result still felt dank, crumbling and underground despite the beauteous nature of the compositions. “Vast and Empty” was the song to convince me as I explored that debut record several months after release with its warped bass guitar tone beneath the intense sisyphean climb of the guitars, that’d been the main reason I’d been hyped up to see what they’d managed on ‘Eye of Water‘.

The band tag their style “shoegazing death metal”, though there are prominent post-rock elements which drive these 10-20 minute pieces as they develop with tirades equaled by 70’s progressive rock (they cite King Crimson, Magma) indulgences. A “post-death metal” tag could make just as much sense ’til we consider style in terms of death metal canon, a similar consideration you might recall has caused some discussion surrounding a similar issue of classification for what Bedsore and Sweven were doing off the jump, even if the components involved were clear enough in each case. Whatever you decide to tag ‘Eye of Water‘ as (I prefer the “deathgaze” term, personally) the band’ve pushed heavier into the dreamlike post-rock/shoegazing territory with this second album while keeping the feeling of death metal available to the recording (per producer/engineer Charlie Koryn) primarily through the vocal performances and certain riffs. Straying from some of the blackgaze edged tremolo rigging found on ‘Adrift in Grief‘, leaves more open air for guitar effects and guttural vocals (no ‘clean’ singing on this one) to resonate for a sound which is not exactly Dream Unending in terms of composition but comes close to that vibe on occasion, particularly with ~19 minute mid-album stunner “Oblations for the Sun” and its drift between a number of dreaming-dead movements.

Seventy five minutes dedicated ad astra. — The provenance of ‘Sea of Tears‘ as a starting point and careful study of the virtues of Tideless‘ first full-length as the stylistic concept achieved are key in terms of understanding the taste that marks the intent of the band as they constitute ‘progress’ made over the course of the last seven or so years with fusion of forms. ‘Eye of Water‘ still bears its rotten underground roots but does not obsess over death metal riffs, in this sense death/doom and atmospheric death metal are urgent in their ‘read’ per the senses of the sub-genre obsessive but the construct of each of the four main pieces herein are built upon gothic metal, shoegaze/alt rock, 90’s post-rock, and progressive rock signifiers. While this might be discouraging for folks looking for wrist-crushing riffcraft one of the major points of appeal of this band’s work, from my perspective, is that they go too far with pressing the limits of merging depressive rock’s most downtrodden shuffling with already disparate death/doom metal atmospherics.

Thankfully this comes in steady enough reveal as opening instrumental “Drowning (19° 40′ 49″ N, 99° 0′ 36″ W)” sets up the point of ingress across its ~7 minute exploration of its main guitar hook, one of the most tuneful pieces on the album all things considered and one which sets a high bar with its worming touch. True opener “Fields at Dawn” takes advantage of the state of awed calm, dripping into a similar state of dreary mid-90’s death/doom as the first deathly bellow lets loose and reads as gothic in its arcing groove and almost Disembowelment-level vocal. Fans of Lycus should immediately appreciate this approach as the quintet roars and rushes along the first third of the piece cutting through a few different variations on a swerving melody which takes its first dark turn around ~3:42 minutes in, this is about as “death metal” as ‘Eye of Water‘ truly gets beyond a number of bursts used for contrast (or emphasis of phrase) throughout the full listen, or, even just within this 15 minute opening number itself. The last ten minutes of the piece present a mournful rise which I suppose I’d consider more of a post-rock inspired movement with its outstretched and rescinded main guitar line slowly receding over the course of the last third of the song. The opening moments might already be lashing out with broad strokes, perhaps the most memorable quarter of the album for the death/doom inclined, but Tideless have only just slapped the surface with their submersible soul.

The aforementioned “Oblations for the Sun” is the point where I believe funeral death/doom metal fandom will begin to more readily embrace the croaking and draining avant-garde strange of ‘Eye of Water‘, a piece which barges in with its moldy wings spread and teeth out scrambling about as if tainted by ‘The Lost Years‘ for its first two minutes before rescinding into and ethereal coiling motion in approach of the sixth minute or so. Of all of the pieces on this album this ~19 minute has the most to show, the highest count of ideas per minute and despite focusing so heavily on atmospheric bluster, of course making it one of my favorite newer developments in Tideless‘ sound as they’re unsurprisingly great at generating queasy atmospheric dread, much moreso than cutting a rigid death metal rug. The drunken flute-like synths which spike up loudest in development of its crooked melody ~9:30 minutes (or, halfway) into the song is tragic in its glowing video game OST level movement lending a deranged, off-kilter taint to the mood of the piece, an unusual avant-garde choice which again recalls the experimental origins of funeral doom at its deepest point of underground. No doubt the band will streamline and more carefully execute their forms in hybrid situ down the road but at the moment there is an exciting grittiness and immediacy to this work which suggests it isn’t over thought and may potentially be driven by feeling.

A desert that only bathymetry could reveal. — Three songs in and still roughly 35 minutes left for ‘Eye of Water‘ to reveal and in most cases I’d dock Tideless a few points for such ambitious disregard for the listener’s free time yet this wasn’t such an anxietous or uncomfortable experience that I couldn’t hang with it for seventy-five minutes at a time. I’d assume “Laurels of Victory” is the piece with guest leads from Garret Johnson (VoidCeremony) and it is also the one song to make most direct and simple use of keyboards to generate rhythmic hum, dramatism for the piece as it struggled to crystalize beyond an extended interlude toward a piece which ends on a barreling and barking final note, something akin to progressive death metal athletics; The real question that -should- be nagging every mind staring at a 24 minute closing piece (“Lush.Serene.Dissolved”) is whether or not the piece justifies its length with anything particularly new or essential for this experience. I suppose from my point of view it is one of the more essential pieces in terms of its main hook dirging in mind as the pace picks up nearby the halfway mark while also serving as a companion piece to reinforce the exaggerative verve of “Oblations for the Sun” while also taking an easygoing walk back to the opening piece when the album is left on repeat. The album could’ve been cut down to ~45 minutes and rang just as loud with substantive interest and style but these pieces do help to complete the outsized vision of ‘Eye of Water‘.

Bringing the tunefully adrift consciousness of depressive/alt-rock into an abstract extreme doom and death metal landscape turns out be a rare success in this case of indulgence, a fruitful idea on the part of Tideless which amounts to a unique and bold approach to experiential extremism, a beautiful sound which warrants some further iteration and refinement to be sure. An underground outlier on the more interesting spectrum nowadays the possibilities no longer over-bear the music itself as ‘Eye of Winter‘ demands patience, sure, but appears wholly confident in its plunge into the deep end of the reflecting pool. Time invested has thus far granted some of the deepest immersion available to death metal adjacency so far this year on my part, or, at least something entirely different to enrich the landscape. A very high recommendation.

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