THE OCEAN: New Live Video Feat. MIKE ARMINE (ROSETTA) Shared; Album Out via PELAGIC RECORDS and METAL BLADE RECORDS

14-11-2018 Bucharest , Romania Special guest Mike Armine from Rosetta

raulnegoita

TITLE

THE OCEAN: New Live Video Feat. MIKE ARMINE (ROSETTA) Shared; Album Out via PELAGIC RECORDS and METAL BLADE RECORDS

BY

THE OCEAN

LABEL

Metal Blade / Pelagic Records

RELEASE

2 November 2018

The Ocean just shared a live video perforning the track "Orosirian (For the Great Blue Cold Now Reigns)". The video was shot during the band's show in Bucharest, Romania (Control Club) some days ago. Watch the powerful video featuring Mike Armine (ROSETTA) at THIS LOCATION. Feel free to spread the word!

Robin Staps comments: "We’ve had the pleasure to have Mike Armine of ROSETTA guest with us on our recent European headline tour with ROSETTA and ÅRABROT. Mike and Loic delivered a dual-vocal performance of 'Orosirian / For The Great Blue Cold Now Reigns' off ‚Precambrian'. This clip was filmed by a fan at the sold out Bucharest show at Control Club on November 14th, my birthday… just a single camera recording, but it captures the energy and the vibe pretty well.“ 

---

The Ocean Collective’s four-years-in-the-works return has been met with open arms and glowing reviews. The post-metal masterpiece Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic currently sat on the Billboard charts in the US, currently at #12 on Top New Artist Albums, #18 Current Hard Music, and more. The album has also been charting in Canada, Australia, and the band’s home country of Germany  (#41 on Offizielle Deutsche Charts). Please find more details below.

Ebbs and flows of proggy melodies, crushing guitars, swelling strings and powerful vocals match the heavy lyrical themes The Ocean has made its signature. Phanerozoic I is now available for purchase, along with meticulously designed merch bundles, something for which they’ve become known, via Metal Blade Records and the band’s own Pelagic Records.


stream PHANEROZOIC I: PALAEOZOIC here or buy it here.

---

PHANEROZOIC I: PALAEOZOIC

Released November 2 via Metal Blade Records & Pelagic Records

SOUNDCHECK / ALBUM OF THE MONTH (November) - POLLS
#1 - Album of the Month at Aardschok (Netherlands)
#3 - Visions (Germany) and "Visions Readers Charts" on position #14 in December.
#3 - Metal Hammer (Germany)
#5 - Rock Hard (Germany)
#9 - Legacy (Germany)

Featured on BBC Radio 1

CHART ENTRIES NORTH AMERICA
#12 - Billboard (US) Top New Artist Albums
#18 - Billboard (US) Current Hard Music
#47 - Billboard (US) Current Rock
#49 - Billboard (US) Top Record Label Independent Albums
#78 - Billboard (US) Current Digital Albums
#160 - Billboard (US) Top 200 Current Albums

#132 - Canadian Top 200 Albums
#20 - Canadian Hard Music Charts
#89 - Canadian Digital Music Charts


GERMANY
#41 on Offizielle Deutsche Charts (GER)


AUSTRALIA
#41 on ARIA Australia Digital Albums Chart

---

Quotes: 
“...tastefully and ceaselessly juxtaposes guttural and transcendental treatments with masterful cohesion, yielding a simultaneously breathtaking and brutal journey every fan of the genre should take.” (8/10) - Metal Injection

"...hefty discordant post-metal riffs and chaotic percussion, interspersed with a touch of synth to accentuate the dynamic range."- Revolver
"Will 2018 be the year of The Ocean? I predict it will be...it’s fucking great." - MetalSucks

“...an achievement of lush and fascinating soundscapes..Palaeozoic is a highly artistic work that reveals increasing layers of depth with each successive listen” - Invisible Oranges

“...serves to give starving drone-sludge academics their fix...flowered with restful keys, echoing guitar patters, horns and cello.” (8.5/10) - Blabbermouth

“Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic aerates prog metal with a Cimmerian shade.” (7/10) - Decibel

“The Ocean have become a post-metal cornerstone, not only for their solid output but for the success of their label, Pelagic Records.”- Metal Hammer UK

“...firmly planted within the king of sludgy post-metal The Ocean have always excelled at, but goes in all kinds of unexpected directions” - BrooklynVegan

“The release towers over the listener like a massive monolith of musical prowess, proving that no amount of time seems poised to full the edge of this post-metal masterpiece of a band.” (5/5) - New Noise Magazine

“The Ocean have fully realized and embraced their sound...the most complete and enjoyable experience one can have of this band” (7/10) - Exclaim!

“Phanerozoic [I: Palaeozoic] further proves that The Ocean are pretty much unparalleled in what they do” - Heavy Blog is Heavy

"Will 2018 be the year of The Ocean? I predict it will be." - MetalSucks

"Prog-rock lives!" - Loudwire

"The Ocean nutzen ihre schier unerschöpflichen Fähigkeiten für eine aufwühlendes Post Metal-Werk, das den namen Epos redlich verdient hat." Metal Hammer Germany

".. ein standesgemäß überlebensgroßes Konzept für eine Band der Superlative wie the Ocean." Rock Hard Germmany

"..., erneut zeigen The Ocean, wie düster, heavy, zerbrechlich, intelligent und intensiv Musik sein kann." Deaf Forever

"Phanerozoic I ist bei aller Qualität eben unvollständig, das verstärkt aber nur das Sehnen nach Phanerozoic II (...), wenn wirklich die ersten Säbelzahnwesen audtreten." Visions

"Glückwunsch! Der Preis für das textlich anspruchsvollste Album dieser Ausgabe geht nach Berlin." Eclipsed

Go Behind the Scenes with Decibel

Expansive, all-encompassing, reaching extraordinary depths...all can be said about both the dark abyss that forms the vast majority of our planet, and the band from which it takes its name. Today, The Ocean Collective marks the first part of their long awaited return, four years in the making. Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic is out today, with Phanerozoic II to follow in 2020. Earning high praise for previously released singles “Permian” and “Devonian,” and topping it all with the intense, out-of-this-world video for “Cambrian,” the full album can finally be streamed in the intended order, sprawling from post-prog to industrial electronic to melodic sludge and beyond.

Ebbs and flows of proggy melodies, crushing guitars, swelling strings and powerful vocals match the heavy lyrical themes The Ocean has made its signature. Phanerozoic I is now available for purchase, along with meticulously designed merch bundles, something for which they’ve become known, via Metal Blade Records and the band’s own Pelagic Records.

PURCHASE HERE

Phanerozoic I: Palaezoic Tracklist:
The Cambrian Explosion
Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence
Ordovicium: The Glaciation of Gondwana
Silurian: Age of Sea Scorpions
Devonian: Nascent
The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse
Permian: The Great Dying

---

Debuts Explosive “Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence” Visuals; Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic Out 11/2 via Metal Blade - Preorder Here

Watch “Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence” HERE!

Continuing with the massive lead up to their highly anticipated new album, Germany’s post-metal-elite The Ocean Collective are unveiling the absolutely explosive visuals for their unreleased single “Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence,” the third preview of Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic. As The Ocean are known for their mammoth melodies, ebbing from crushing climaxes to gorgeously intricate interludes, so the video matches their prehistoric, theatrical leanings. Using makeup and hand-molded masks, director Craig Murray transforms vocalist Loic Rossetti into a Cambrian-age lichen-creature, weaving molds of the band into a rocky prehistoric landscape, taking hours to meticulously shoot the video frame-by-frame
.
Explains Murray, "This is a practical effects film which leans towards multiple single frame captures to creature the sequences. Everything is built from scratch. There’s long exposure animation, stop frame, miniatures and cloud tanks. If the thing I’m working with can’t be physically picked up and held in my hand, I struggle to understand how to use it; I prefer this long, messy and exhausting process.”

Adds The Ocean mastermind Robin Staps, “Craig has created a unique aesthetic visualization of our music, which is different from anything I’ve ever seen. He’s spent 6 sleepless weeks working on this basically non-stop, all by himself. He plastered tons of clay and lichens over Loic’s face and head, and really managed to turn him into an imaginary 'Cambrian creature‘. It’s incredible to see the final result now, and how the whole thing has evolved."

What results is a nearly eight-minute epic journey through space and time, fusing art, special effects, science, and absolutely mind-melting rock.

Watch “Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence” HERE!

---

THE OCEAN - "PHANEROZOIC I: PALAEOZOIC" ALBUM & EUROPEAN TOUR

release date: November 2, 2018

After 5 years of touring on Pelagial, THE OCEAN started recording their 8th studio album in February 2018, split into two volumes to be separately released in 2018 and 2020 respectively, titled Phanerozoic. The Phanerozoic eon succeeded the Precambrian supereon, spanning a 500 million- year period leading to the present day. It has witnessed the evolution and diversification of plant and animal life on Earth, and the partial destruction of it during 5 mass extinction events. Conceptually and musically, The Ocean’ s Phanerozoic is the missing link between the albums Precambrian and Heliocentric / Anthropocentric. The band has recently released the first track of the upcoming album, titled “Permian: The Great Dying”. Check it out HERE!

The process of laying down tracks for Phanerozoic began in Iceland, with the drums being tracked at Sigur Ros' own Sundlaugin Studios with long-time friend and producer Julien Fehlmann. A big drum room with great natural reverb located in a bleak and beautiful place surrounded by nature provided the perfect location for the initiation of this record. The process of this recording session was documented, and recently premiered via Drum! Magazine. Check it out HERE!

Each of THE OCEAN’s releases has proven a profoundly immersive experience, with an unrivalled attention to detail - something which becomes particularly apparent in the award-winning packaging: for the lavish acrylic boxset that came with 2013's Pelagial, over 10.000 acrylic layers were individually silk-screen printed and manually assembled. That which accompanied 2010's double album Heliocentric / Anthropocentric was particularly unique, its gatefold sleeve featuring rotating gold-foiled PVC dials screwed on top of it. Phanerozoic will not fall short of its predecessors: Phanerozoic will come in a trifold (LP) / digipak (CD) with die cuts through multiple layers, creating a 3D effect; topped off by metallic inks and a blind embossing emulating a rock structure. All preorders can be done  HERE.

---

THE OCEAN will start the PHANEROZOIC touring cycle with strong support from the PELAGIC RECORDS roster. Comments Robin Staps:

"We are more than happy to have these great bands on board with us:

Rosetta have been around for almost as long as us, and have created their own eclectic sonic universe between post rock and metal throughout their carreer spanning 6 albums. We had them out with us for our Precambrian 10th anniversary tour earlier this year, and just felt that run was too short to leave it at that.
Arabrot Official
We have a sweet tooth for (especially 90's) noise rock, but Norway's Årabrot are much more than that: a band with an interesting story, poignant lyrics and a truly charismatic sound that is quite different from both THE OCEAN and ROSETTA, which is precisely why we wanted to have them on this tour.

LLNN
The Ocean and LLNN share a love for violent synths, which define and color LLNN's relentlessly heavy and abrasive sound. Synths and metal are a tricky combination, one that is not easily mastered... LLNN is dystopian, contemporary heavy music at its best.

B R I Q U E V I L L E
When we entered the main stage tent at last year's Dunk! festival at about 3 in the afternoon, there was an instrumental band playing a lengthy, meditative part.. but this band was different from the typical post rock fare. They would soon burst into one of the heaviest riffs I have ever heard in my life, all of a sudden, completely unexpected. Briqueville are a truly heavy instrumental metal band, and they put on a great conceptual live show."

Find out more about all these fine bands over at Pelagic Records.
Here's a live perfomance of LLNN playing "Rapture" at this year's Pelagic Fest in Berlin. Careful! Overwhelming heaviness ahead… Follow THIS Link!

We're looking forward to see you all at one of the dates below!

December 2018 w/ LLNN & BRIQUEVILLE:
27/12     ROSTOCK, MAU CLUB (DE)
28/12     JENA, KASSABLANCA (DE)
29/12     NÜRNBERG, CLUB STEREO (DE)
30/12     BERLIN, LIDO (DE)

For more info click HERE!
   
PROGFEST Australia 2019:
26/01     MELBOURNE, THE CROXTON (AUS)
27/01     SYDNEY, THE FACTORY THEATRE (AUS)
28/01     BRISBANE, THE BRIGHTSIDE (AUS)

For more info click HERE!

ALBUM INFO "PHANEROZOIC I: PALAEOZOIC"

Since 2001, the Berlin-based musician collective The Ocean have released 7 critically acclaimed studio albums, and a split EP with Japanese post-rock legends Mono. With an ever-changing lineup of various on- and off-stage musicians and visual artists, the relentlessly touring group have become well known for their immense,

mind-expanding live shows, which they have carried into the most remote corners of the globe, from Siberian squats to colonial theatres in Ecuador. Over the course of their storied career, The Ocean have toured with Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Anathema, Between The Buried And Me a n d Devin Townsend, and have appeared on major festivals including Roskilde, Dour, Pukkelpop, Roadburn, Wacken, With Full Force, Summer Slaughter, Summer Breeze and Graspop. The band's own Pelagic Records has also become one of Europe's leading labels for post-rock and post-metal, with a catalog of 120 releases since 2009.

“The Ocean do for earth science class what Mastodon did for Melville: make learning brutal", Decibel wrote about 2007's Precambrian, Revolver describing it as a “Teutonic paean to Earth's geology“. 2013's seminal Pelagial, described as “a filmic ode to shifting moods, dichotomous influences and the musical personification of sinking towards the planet's deepest underwater points“ by Rock Sound, was a milestone for the band, and their most conceptual work to date, and was ranked #3 at

LoudWire's “Best Metal Albums Of 2013”, and #5 in About.com's “2013 Best Heavy Metal Albums“.

PHANEROZOIC

After 5 years of touring on Pelagial, the band started recording their 8th studio album in February 2018, split into two volumes to be separately released in 2018 and 2020 respectively, titled Phanerozoic. The Phanerozoic eon succeeded the Precambrian supereon, spanning a 500 million-year period leading to the present day. It has witnessed the evolution and diversification of plant and animal life on Earth, and the partial destruction of it during 5 mass extinction events. Conceptually and musically, The Ocean’s Phanerozoic is the missing link between the albums Precambrian a n d Heliocentric / Anthropocentric.

Guitarist and primary songwriter Robin Staps penned Phanerozoic as he did its predecessors, in seclusion in a house by the ocean. The first volume of the double album Phanerozoic is made up of bleak and heavy songs, boiled down to the essential core of the musical ideas driving them. With analog synths merging with the heavy guitars, the addition of Peter Voigtmann to the band’s ranks has made a marked difference. After years of handling the spectacular lighting design at The Ocean’s live

shows, essentially “playing drums on the lighting console every night” as Staps puts it, he now brings a bevy of angry, dystopian sounds to the songs. Phanerozoic also marks the recording debut of bassist Mattias Hägerstrand and drummer Paul Seidel, who both bring their own style and approach to their respective instruments.

As with all of The Ocean’s releases, the music is only one piece of the puzzle. The collective has always been known for lyrics that are poignant and thought-provoking, and Phanerozoic is no exception. The central idea upon which the lyrics are premised is that of ‘eternal recurrence’, “Nietzsche's concept that everything happens over and over again, an infinite amount of times throughout infinite time and space”, Staps explains. “When you look at Earth’s history you find a lot of

evidence for this: continents have collided and drifted apart across the oceans and collided again, life nearly disappeared various times but then resurged again... this album is essentially about time, perception of time, and repetition. It is about coming to terms with the fact that there are things in life which will recur and which we cannot change and finding ways of dealing with that”. Songs like “Permian: The Great Dying”, referencing an event when 95% of all life on Earth was wiped out, evoke questions as to whether the mass extinction theme of the album is related to the current debate about climate change. “When you hear the term 'mass extinction', everyone thinks of meteors and dying dinosaurs... but what happened at the end of the Permian was not related to any pieces of rock falling from the sky”, Staps explains. The most probable scenario is that The Great Dying was caused by increased volcanic activity which caused a global warming of about 5°, which then led to the release of large amounts of methane gas from shallow seabeds into the atmosphere. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas and caused further warming in a loop effect. “We are now looking at an increase of temperature by about 4° by the end of the century, and the former worst case scenario has now become the proclaimed goal. The same increase in global temperatures which happened at the end of the Permian over the course of several hundreds of thousands of years, is very likely to happen in just over 100-200 years now.” It is true however that none of the 5 mass extinction events during the Phanerozoic were caused by human behavior, all occurred long before humanity appeared on the map. “Looking at the Phanerozoic makes you realize that even without human impact, Earth has the power and potential to wipe out humanity in its entirety, at any given moment in time”, Staps concludes. “The causes for the global warming which led to The Great Dying were not human-made, but I don't see any reason to assume that the results of the current human-made warming would not be similarly devastating. Literally everything died at the end of the Permian, even insects didn't survive.”

The immediacy of Phanerozoic can be attributed to the band working out every detail and testing every song live in the rehearsal room prior to heading into the studio, a different approach as compared to their previous releases. The process of laying down tracks began in Iceland, with the drums being tracked at Sigur Ros' own Sundlaugin Studios with longtime friend and producer Julien Fehlmann. A big drum room with great natural reverb located in a bleak and beautiful place surrounded by nature provided the perfect location for the initiation of this record. The remainder of the album was tracked in Berlin. A brass section was recorded, and previous collaborators Vincent Membrez (piano) and longtime live cellist Dalai Theofilopoulou are featured. Katatonia vocalist Jonas Renkse delivers a stunning performance on the 11 minute track “Devonian”. However, this is very much vocalist Loïc Rossetti’s album. Staps and Rossetti worked extensively, trying out a variety of styles and focusing on finding the best possible approach for each song. “Loïc screaming over a heavy part always works great, but our goal was to avoid always going the obvious route this time”, Staps explains. The result is an album which gains its heaviness not from the surface but from below, not so much from the vocals, but from the underlying riffage, bass and drumming. It was a conscious decision not to let this fondness of experimenting stretch to the choice of the team working on the album: Julien Fehlmann tracked drums, Jens Bogren (Katatonia, Opeth) handled mixing and mastering duties, and Norwegian artist Martin Kvamme, whose only clients are Mike Patton and The Ocean, was once more in charge of the mind-blowing artwork, making this his 5th consecutive collaboration with the collective. “There's no reason to change a perfectly working formula”, Staps comments. “When Jens played us the basic sound of the record, Loïc and I looked at each other and our jaws dropped. It sounded SO FUCKING HEAVY that for a moment we were thinking about what we could potentially do to make it sound a bit more human and a bit less perfect...

but we eventually learned to accept that Jens had simply done an outstanding job”. Each of The Ocean’s releases has proven a profoundly immersive experience, with an unrivalled attention to detail - something which becomes particularly apparent in the award-winning packaging: for the lavish acrylic boxset that came with 2013's Pelagial, over 10.000 acrylic layers were individually silk-screen printed and manually assembled. That which accompanied 2010's double album Heliocentric / Anthropocentric was particularly unique, its gatefold sleeve featuring rotating goldfoiled PVC dials screwed on top of it. Phanerozoic will not fall short of its predecessors: Phanerozoic will come in a trifold (LP) / digipak (CD) with die cuts through multiple layers, creating a 3D effect; topped off by metallic inks and a blind embossing emulating a rock structure. Phanerozoic is out on November 2nd via Metal Blade Records (CD / digital) & Pelagic Records (vinyl).

---

LINE-UP
Loic Rossetti - Vocals, Robin Staps – Guitars, Paul Seidel - Drums, David Ahfeldt – Guitars,
Mattias Hägerstrand – Bass, Peter Voigtmann - Synths

DISCOGRAPHY
Fogdiver (2003) • Fluxion (2004) • Aeolian (2006) • Precambrian (2007) • Heliocentric (2010) • Anthropocentric (2010) • Pelagial (2013) • Phanerozoic I (2018)

---

The Ocean
homepage
facebook
preorder
spotify
Band Pic Credit: Jo Fischer

Metal Blade Records
homepage

Pelagic Records
homepage
facebook
youtube 

CZ! Promotions
facebook
hompage