The Ocean: Bathyalpelagic II: The Wish In Dreams – new video

The new THE OCEAN video, I read it is their first ever, was directed by Alexander Kraudelt and Lukas Hambach and produced by Frameshock; ‘Bathyalpelagic II: The Wish in Dreams’ comes off the group's April 2013 release ‘Pelagial’, issued through Metal Blade Records. The concept album which invites listeners to journey with the band “beginning at the surface of the ocean and plunging through all five pelagic depth zones: epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathyalpelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadopelagic” was written, recorded, mixed and to-be-performed-live as one single 53-minutes piece of music. This journey was mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren (who, reportedly, at one point faced a mammoth amount of 288 audio tracks) at Fascination Street Studios in Örebrö, Sweden,  while its art was created by Seldon Hunt. ‘Pelagial’, the standard double CD edition, should be sought out here (Metal Blade store), and the special acrylic boxset edition of the album, released through the band's own Pelagic Records, on both CD and 4×10” vinyl formats (containing the CD digipak or the 2 vinyl gatefolds respectively, “buried” underneath five thick acrylic layers coloured in different hues of transparent blue, of course reflecting the individual pelagic depth zones – courtesy illustrator Martin Kvamme) can be found here (Pelagic Records store). The boxset comes with an extra DVD featuring a 5:1 dolby surround mix of the instrumental album, and the “Pelagial” movie by Craig Murray which “visualizes the journey into the depths and is completes the holistic music and visual art project that is ‘Pelagial’:

“THE OCEAN pull it off simply because they present it: they never ram these philosophical concepts down the listener's throat. In this 53-minute work of 11 continuous sections, the band careens through airy, melodic rock to knotty, dense prog metal to suffocatingly bleak post-rock with cohesive neo-classical interludes of chamber strings and acoustic piano. This is made possible by rigorous compositional acumen, communicative, expert, performance precision, articulate, painstaking production, and a beautifully balanced vocal delivery from frontman Loïc Rossetti,” [wrote Thom Jurek, AllMusic – read more here:]

Founded in early 2000 in Berlin, Germany by guitarist and songwriter Robin Staps, THE OCEAN (who apparently “occupy a space right near NEUROSIS, ISIS and CULT OF LUNA”) released their eponymous EP in 2002, followed by the first part of the two-album project in 2004, ‘Fluxion’, which ended with ‘Aeolian’ LP in 2006, described by Alex Henderson, AllMusic, as a “generally decent listen if one isn’t afraid of being musically pummeled, stomped, and kicked repeatedly” (more here):

THE OCEAN Collective's, counting eight members, third album and their first concept album (which dealt with the elusive geological era Precambrian), 2007's ‘Precambrian’ featured guest musicians OLD MAN GLOOM's Caleb Scofield, CONVERGE's Nate Newton, TEXTURES' Erik Kalsbeek etc as well as musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra:

Thir first album recorded with vocalist Loïc Rossetti, 2010's ‘Heliocentric’, apparently couldn’t take its proper shape anywhere but 1000 meters above the sea level, in the highest city in Europe, La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland, where it was recorded along with its sister record, ‘Anthropocentric’, also released in 2010:

“Each of these (each OCEAN record, really) is a sit-down-with-the-lyric-sheet-and-ponder experience; it’s possible to just let the loud guitars and thundering drums wash over you, as you would with, say, HIGH ON FIRE, but that’s so clearly not what the band wants to happen that ‘Anthropocentric’ ceases to be cathartic, like all the best metal, and starts to feel like homework. … That’s not to say that the band doesn’t rock,” [wrote Phil Freeman, AllMusic – more here:]

THE OCEAN features: Loic Rossetti - vocals, Robin Staps – guitar, Jonathan Nido – guitar, Louis Jucker – bass and Luc Hess – drums