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.
Check out their website
The Ocean on Facebook
The Ocean's YouTube Page
what i need is a link. to bandcamp,facebook,purevolume,stuff.
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