Author: Primož Novak
Artist: Ocean, The
Label: Metal Blade Records
Release: year_month
Running time: 53:13
Rating: 5/5
It’s nothing new these days when a band shows up mixing different metal genres. But mixing only metal genres somehow isn’t enough anymore, so all sorts of progressive metal outfits keep popping up, throwing in elements of rock, jazz, maybe even blues. More pointless bands have appeared than meaningful ones, because they just chuck non-metal elements into their songs out of a desperate urge to earn the »prog« label.
The story of the German-Swiss crew The Ocean is different. Their first releases were a pretty inventive blend of sludge metal and chaotic hardcore. Thanks to the dreamy passages, they also picked up the post-metal tag. The band turned properly progressive with the album Precambrian, which on the one hand stuck to chaotic hardcore and sludge metal, while on the other some songs were complex and long in the style of Opeth. With the albums Heliocentric and Anthropocentric, The Ocean showed their calmer side, modeled on post-rock and progressive rock concepts, even though Anthropocentric was already hitting harder.
Three years after the double album Heliocentric/Anthropocentric, it was time for punch no. 7, which bandleader Robin Staps titled Pelagial. It’s a concept album once again, built around a dive to the bottom of the ocean. The songs themselves are laid out according to the ocean’s pelagic zones, but it has to be stressed that the concept isn’t based only on the descent. As far as the instrumental side goes, maybe it is. But the lyrics were inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s bizarre sci-fi drama Stalker.
Pelagial opens with a light, short intro featuring piano, with strings audible in the background. That lightness represents the epipelagic zone of the ocean. The same lightness, representing the mesopelagic zone, carries on into the song Into The Uncanny, which stands out at the start with violins and later with a catchy chorus, but there’s already a hint of what’s coming: the music is about to get heavier.
The next three songs, representing the bathypelagic zone, are undoubtedly the most aggressive on the whole album. With these songs The Ocean are warning us that they haven’t forgotten their past. There are heavy, chaotic, hardcore-tinged riffs in the style of the albums Precambrian, Aeolian and Fluxion. On the other hand, they haven’t shoved aside the various vocal harmonies and rhythmic shifts. Before things calm down, The Ocean hit us with the song Disequilibrated, which boasts the heaviest guitars on the whole album, ones you can even compare to death metal.
The heaviness of the bathypelagic zone settles down in the abyssopelagic zone, first with the song Boundless Vasts, where the strings return, and then with Signals of Anxiety, in which the band shows off its versatility with melodic guitars, singable vocals and a post-rock atmosphere.
After that, everything slides into the hadopelagic zone, which is supposed to represent the darkest region of the ocean, but here, after the short, punchy, atmospheric intro Omen of the Deep, the band delivers the nine-minute song Let Them Believe, the most progressive and epic track, one that sounds pleasant and, with its many melodies and dreamy passages, reminds me of Opeth.
With the hadopelagic zone, The Ocean haven’t hit bottom yet. With Let Them Believe, the whole thing would sound too pretty and not morbid enough. So The Ocean went for the other extreme, which shows in the song Demersal: Cognitive Dissonance, with more post, sludge and doom metal components. You could draw a comparison to Neurosis here too. The atmosphere turns suitably dark and melancholic. The rhythm section calms down as well and stops overcomplicating things. And the guitars are tuned lower, too.
Many albums reach some kind of peak, a meaningful conclusion, with their last song. With Pelagial, The Ocean reach the bottom, which isn’t a bad thing at all. The song Benthic: The Origin turns the ocean floor into music, where there’s nothing left but darkness. The music itself reaches for minimalism as the tempo slows down and only sludge and doom attributes remain.
After 53 minutes, The Ocean prove they’ve managed to make, in their own way, the best album of their career. Throughout the record, the listener witnesses an excellent arrangement of musical genres that aren’t just thrown together, but where everything is sensibly structured, with a beginning and an end. It’s also interesting that Pelagial was originally meant to be purely an instrumental album because of singer Luici Rosetti’s vocal problems, but the vocals were recorded afterwards and fit the album’s concept perfectly.
The Ocean haven’t neglected their beginnings. They didn’t go back to their roots, but tied everything together in a way that makes sense, a result of experimentation, and The Ocean undoubtedly have an exceptional feel for experimenting. They don’t repeat themselves, they often surprise, but at the same time you can expect that they haven’t betrayed their sound, which, judging by their earlier releases, they’re still developing.
Pelagial isn’t just a standout album within its (sub)genre, but in metal in general. These days, albums with interesting concepts and well-written arrangements are rare. The Ocean remain oddballs at exactly the right intellectual level. And if they keep this up, they can’t possibly let us down.
Lineup
Robin Staps – guitars, samples
Jona Nido – guitars
Luc Hess – drums
Luci Rossetti – vocals
Louis Jucker, Chris Breuer – bass
Production
Jens Bogren
Track list
1. Epipelagic
2. Mesopelagic: The Uncanny
3. Bathyalpelagic I: Impasses
4. Bathyalpelagic II: The Wish in Dreams
5. Bathyalpelagic III: Disequillibrated
6. Abyssopelagic I: Boundless Vasts
7. Abyssopelagic II: Signals of Anxiety
8. Hadopelagic I: Omen of the Deep
9. Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe
10. Demersal: Cognitive Dissonance
11. Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes
