The Ocean Announce New Zealand Shows
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 now, 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 heard 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.
Get Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic now
smarturl.it/theoceanaus
THE OCEAN WILL HEADLINE PROGFEST 2019
Saturday, January 26: The Croxton, Melbourne
Sunday, January 27: The Factory Theatre, Sydney
Monday, January 28: The Valley Drive In / The Brightside, Brisbane (Public Holiday)
Tickets available now from
wildthingpresents.com
The Ocean will also play three massive shows in New Zealand
Thursday, January 31: Valhalla, Wellington
Friday, February 1: Club Tavern, Christchurch
Saturday, February 2: Gelatos, Auckland
Tix from
valhallatouring.com & utr.co.nz
Wild Thing Presents is the authority on progressive music in Australia, with bands including Caligula’s Horse, AlithiA, and Orsome Welles, signed to their management & booking agency. Wild Thing also presents the annual PROGFEST which sees some of the worlds finest prog bands headline the event with the best Australian talent. Recently, the company launched Wild Thing Records, with its first signing, Circles. Founder and CEO, Eli Chamravi says of The Ocean joining the roster, “We’re thrilled to have legendary German progressive metal act The Ocean join the Wild Thing Records family for their incredible new album Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic. I’ve worked with the band for many years regarding touring, and couldn’t be happier to extend our relationship to a label capacity as well”.
The Ocean are one of the most accomplished and revered post-rock & post-metal acts on the planet. Having toured with the likes of Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Anathema, Red Fang, Devin Townsend and many many more.
They are also staples on festival circuits the world over, having spent the past 5 years taking their last studio release, 2013’s Pelagial, to fans in every corner of the globe.
Album number eight, Phanerozoic is such an epic undertaking that the band will release it as two volumes. The Ocean are renowned for their geological and historical interest and on Phanerozoic, the albums immense depth is as big as the time period itself!
The Phanerozoic eon succeeded the Precambrian supereon, spanning a 500 million-year period leading to the present day, and 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.
Guitarist and primary songwriter Robin Staps penned Phanerozoic as he did its predecessors, in seclusion in a house by the ocean. Aware of the progression he wanted to convey from the outset, the first volume is made up of bleak and heavy songs, boiled down to the essential core of the musical ideas driving them. Analog synths merge with the heavy guitars and create an angry, dystopian feel to the songs.
Lyrically, the central idea 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, evokes questions as to whether the mass extinction theme of the album is related to the current debate about climate change. However, none of the 5 mass extinction events during the Phanerozoic were caused by human behavior, all occurring long before humanity appeared on the map.
“This outlook puts humanity in a much more powerless position than the current debate about climate change, where we see ourselves as capable of destroying the Earth and the delicate ecological balances of our surroundings.
Looking at the Phanerozoic makes you realize, however, that Earth also has the power and potential to wipe out humanity in its entirety, at any given moment in time”, Staps concludes.
