I also haven’t had sex in over a week but that’s besides the point.

One of the highlights of my time in Los Angeles last week was getting to hear the new Ocean record at the Metal Blade offices. The record, Heliocentric, is actually the first of two records The Ocean will release this year, and let me be the first to tell you… what I heard sounds fucking amazing! New vocalist Loic Rossetti sounds just as good as Precambrian vocalist Mike Pilat did, if not better — he definitely displays a wider range on this record, bringing quite a bit of clean singing (no, not in that way) to the table. The record is heavy, intricate, atmospheric, proggy… you know, it’s The fucking Ocean!

But you don’t have to take my word for it anymore. The Ocean have launched a brand new website for Heliocentric with a planetary-based design fitting of the album’s title. Clicking on each orbiting planet gets you a clip of new music and a full lyric sheet. Leave it open to the genius of Robin Staps to put together a website and concept this cool and cohesive. The artwork that accompanies each track sample is the bomb too — I wonder who drew these pieces and whether they’re part of the album artwork or not?

These new clips sound fucking incredible and you really need to listen to them right this second. I am so fucking stoked on this record I can’t even contain myself!

-VN

[Thanks: Lorenzo and Ocean super-fan / Uber-Suckalo Mark Moritz-Rabson]