Tidal Wave is a heavy rock quartet founded in the Baltic Sea city of Sundsvall, in central Sweden. They are inspired by traditional heavy metal, grunge and the fuzzy ‘stoner’ subgenres of rock n roll,bands such as Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Audioslave, Fu Manchu and Kyuss and they have carved a niche for themselves in the area.
For the uninitiated, Stoner rock is typically slow-to-mid tempo and features a heavily distorted, groove-laden bass-heavy sound, melodic vocals, and "retro" production. The genre emerged during the early 1990s and was pioneered foremost by Monster Magnet and the California bands Fu Manchu, Kyuss and Sleep.
Following their debut album release, the incongruously-titled ‘Blueberry Muffin’, which sounds like it should be the product of someone like Dana, Tidal Wave gained greater numbers of both streams and followers than they expected which made them ambitious to record new material.
On 13th November they release what has been described as their new “face melting, neck breaking”single ‘End of the Line’.
What can I say? I follow a couple of metal bands but I’m not au fait with 2020 heavy rock but this is exactly how I expect it to sound. It’s crisp, perfectly in time (co-ordinating bass and drums at this pace - if this is slow to mid tempo what is fast like? - isn’t as easy as it sounds) and that bass is like a pile driver. The vocalist has the necessary delivery off to a tee, there’s the obligatory guitar shred and even the odd profanity thrown in. All we need for the coup de grace is a beheaded bat.
Friday nights in Sundsvall must rattle the townsfolk’s window frames.
Tidal Wave are Alexander Sundqvist (vocals), Adam Nordin (bass), Jesper Sjödin (guitar) and Rasmus Sundberg (drums).