Progressive music tends to wax and wane quite a bit in popularity, with certain bands like Animals As Leaders, Death (Progressive Death Metal FTW!), Between the Buried and Me, and a few others maintaining their thrones even when the trend isn’t in their favor. Progressive bands tend to go for unusual approaches within the given musical spectrum they set out in, such as Death’s Chuck Schuldiner choosing technical prowess and unusual scale/tonal choices (especially for a death metal band) or BTBAM’s whole catalog trying to do everything you could think of just off one album. That’s why the name stuck: progressively pushing the boundaries of metal with experimentation and execution.
That being said, TIDAL ARMS, out of Brooklyn, NY, offers up a very stirring and heavy second album. Now, when I say heavy, its not simply clubbing the listener over the head with drop tuning or chuggah-chuggah RAWRs. it’s an atmospheric journey through their musical minds guiding us along so we don’t get lost. It’s similar to what Mastodon would play if they shaved all their beards off, and moved to a New England countryside. Being a second album, it does lack certain depths at times, production-wise and overall sound-wise.
The room mic vocals tend to throw me off just a bit when used on every song, as they are hollow and wear on the ear. It’s somewhat like someone yelling at you from a large, empty bathroom. It just swallows itself. The band sounds very tight, in contrast. The guitars are very heavy, and never stay in just the same spot too long, giving you a nice progressive sound twined in. You know the one. You can tell those particular scales and compositions in an instant. One example lies on #7 Tide Alarms (great play on their name, too), where it starts with some off tone chords, going into jangling off color chords, an dI can instantly tell they’re high functioning musicians.
Again, I get colors of Mastodon and BTBAM throughout the album, but without being those two bands together. They have a great beginning sound, and need to find their own waters within it. Overall, a very admirable second album, with pretty good things to come if they can stick with it for the next one.
