The Ocean: "Pelagial"

Ambitious as always, German-Swiss prog-/post-metal band The Ocean’s new album Pelagial is published simultaneously as an instrumental and a non-instrumental version.  Musically and conceptually, The Ocean stick to what they have been doing:  dense concept albums whose song titles, general idea, and artwork form an artistic whole that speaks equally to the brain and the guts: giving you something to think about while repeatedly punching you in the stomach. The main idea of Pelagial is a journey from the surface of the ocean to its bottom, a musical trip that gets darker, slower, and more oppressive as we descend through the various oceanic layers. Originally, the album was meant to be recorded without vocals, but the recovery of singer Loic Rossetti from vocal cord problems or something led to his return/addition to the recording process, so that now we have two versions of the album.

The instrumental version lets listeners focus much more on the details: the samples of underwater sounds, the quieter parts with piano, violin, or cello, and the different layers of instrumentation, rhythms, and moods. It's quite impressive – and immediately recognizable as The Ocean, which shows that guitarist Robin Stapp, who led the band from the rather loose collective of various musicians to the fixed line-up they've had since 2010, has always had a clear vision of what his band should sound like. Take your time when you listen to this, there is a lot to discover – the increase in pressure signaled by the relentless drumming of “Bathyalpelagic III: Disequilibrated,” for example, the cold and lonely guitar in “Abyssopelagic II: Signals of Anxiety” that turns into something triumphant as the song progresses, or the sense of Otherness in the lead guitar melodies in “Bathyalpelagic III: Disequilibrated” and “Demersal: Cognitive Dissonance.”

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of listening to the vocal version first, so my first few encounters with the instrumental one felt like listening to a Karaoke CD. Once I got over that and tried to follow the descending-into-the-depth theme, I had another issue. I couldn’t help but think about a thing we did in my Italian class not too long ago: our teacher gave us several sentences that we had to put in order so they’d get increasingly rude (to prepare us for real life in Italy, I guess). We did this with a couple of situations (someone parked stupidly so you couldn’t leave with your car, you’ve been waiting for your pizza for an hour, etc.) and usually I got it all wrong. Apparently my sense of rudeness is different from our teacher’s. I also have the suspicion that my sense of “dark/oppressive/heavy” is different from The Ocean’s – because I’m pretty sure that doing a similar excercise with Pelagial – playing the songs in random order and trying to arrange them in a way I think they portray the journey into the deep – would lead to the same result: my oceanic layers would be all over the place. Try it with your friends and see what happens.

I recommend listening to the instrumental version first and then see what Rosetti does with the songs. The vocals not only add another metaphoric dimension to Pelagial (a journey into the depths of the human psyche), but also make this an entirely different album. It’s interesting how the presence of a singer makes us listen to music in a different way. The songs become more distinct from each other, the build-ups in the songs seem even more epic, and there is an additional point of reference that adds to the emotional range of the songs. Just listen to the two versions of “Mesopelagic: Into the Uncanny”: while the crescendo in the instrumental version is already great, the vocals definitely give it a new urgency. The fact that “down” (in the line “From this point on there is only one direction: down”) is the first screamed word on the album is a very nice touch and makes for an awesome moment. Equally awesome is the juxtaposition of piano and screaming in “Demersal: Cognitive Dissonance” (with guest vocals by Thomas Hallbom of Breach). With Rossetti, who ranges from clean singing to an all-out Aaron-Turner-style roar, the band has become a bit more digestible – even at his most intense screaming he doesn’t sound quite as brutal as the more guttural vocalists on Fluxion, Aeolian, and Precambrian – which adds, I think, to the quality of the songs.

Compared to its immediate predecessors Heliocentric and Anthropocentric, Pelagial seems more homogenous and focused, although it doesn’t really offer any surprises. I wonder if the songs might have been different if they had been written with a vocal track in mind from the get-go. However, the bottom line for me is that – no matter if you buy that whole journey-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean thing or not – it’s still very fascinating. Concept aside, Pelagial is an album that is ambitious, cerebral, complex, and earth-shattering all at the same time. There is enough on both the instrumental and the vocal version to stand on their own, but it’s great to be able to go back and forth between both. Depending on your mood, you may immerse yourself in multi-layered instrumental metal, listen to more traditional band-with-a-singer songs, or ruin your vocal cords with some serious Karaoke.


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