OCEAN, THE - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic (Instrumental) (Sealed) (LP)

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. 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 The Ocean. 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. The remainder of the album was tracked in Berlin. A brass section was recorded and Katatonia vocalist Jonas Renkse delivers a stunning performance on the 11 minute track "Devonian". However, this is very much vocalist Lo?c 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. "Lo?c 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, from analog synths merging with electric guitars. Phanerozoic will see the light of day on November 2nd and comes in a Trifold Cover with die cuts through multiple layers, creating a 3D effect, topped off by metallic inks and a blind embossing emulating a rock structure. Each release of the band is an overall concept in which the content is told about the music, the feel and the visual.