The Ocean
Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

We are heading towards the ocean, where the music and clever lyrics for the eighth album by The Ocean. This album was released in November but as my backlog is quite huge it is only now I had time to write about it and perhaps it is a good album to begin the year with, it ends with Permian: The Great Dying one of the extinction events in the history of the Earth, one believed to have been caused by runaway greenhouse effect – sounds familiar? Makes me think of what they say every now and then in Battlestar Galactica: This has happened before and it will happen again, perhaps we are in the process of a new extinction events, plenty of animals are dying and the climate is warming fast so maybe the Permian events will happen again. Or maybe not, it may be like on Venus, it is a hell due to a runaway warming effect, we could not live there. But it isn’t really that this album is about, it is the first part in a story about our planet and its latest 500 million years, and the second part is planned for 2020.

Quite heavy music, the massive soundscape is the first thing that strikes me. It kind of makes the impression of the inevitability of time and the evolution of this planet. It is powerful, progressive and metalcore-ish music with vocals that are growled, screamed and clean, probably with more clean vocals than the unclean. The lyrics are interesting and the album is dynamic throughout and it has a fairly captivating sound making you want to listen. The variation is quite strong as well, the album will not feel too long and they do something more bands should do, make the story over two albums rather than one which I think will be beneficial to this story and the quality of their music overall. There are seven tracks on the album that ends with great dying and the continuation will take it from there.

And it is a good album; the songs are great throughout this album. I have enjoyed listening to it and while it may not alter my top ten list of 2018, it is still well worth checking out. It has thought-worthy lyrics, it is dynamic, it is exciting, and it is a fairly enjoyable album in my view. If you like what The Ocean has done before it is a great album for you and if you only want to find something that is slightly different from the most commonly travelled musical paths it is also a good choice. And I can recommend that you check out this album, it will most likely be worth your while.

I can also mention that the artwork is quite cool and attractive crowning a musically attractive album that I can recommend to anyone of our readers. It is a high quality album that is both creative and interesting; add to that a strong concept and interesting lyrics and you get a really exciting album. And of the seven tracks we get on the album I think that the ending Permian: The Great Dying is the major highlight of the album, I think that is a great way to end this great album.

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