Two of the great unsung heroes of modern heavy music, Mark Moots and Jason Thomas have been churning out devastating riffs and songs of startling potency for the best part of two decades now. They first emerged from Reno, Nevada, in the late ‘90s with twisted groove machine December, cult favourites who hit a thrilling peak of genre-mincing savagery with the release of the seminal The Lament Configuration on Earache Records in 2002. Following that band’s demise, guitarist Moots formed The Swamp Donkey, a looser and more expressive but no less crushing affair that set the underground ablaze with two stellar releases through Undergroove Records, including 2008’s widely acclaimed The Trouble With Crusades.

But it is the restless riff-writers’ current band that seem most likely to earn these Nevada diehards the credit they have long deserved. Purveyors of an exhilarating and emotionally untamed blend of keenly melodic sludge metal, Weight Of The Tide make the kind of heavy, heart-rending music that only ever occurs when musicians are locked in some kind of magical, self-satiating chemistry. In 2017, the band are poised to release All Told, the majestic follow-up to 2015’s deep and dark debut Epilogue, and to reveal the full potential of their creative harmony in the process.