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Speaking of prolific artistis, The Ocean just released two epic concept albums in the middle and end of 2010 and they’re already back at it. That might seem turtle-paced compared to Devin Townsend’s breakneck writing schedule, but one and a half years is as long as it usually takes Metallica to write three or four songs, Slayer to re-write about half an album’s worth of old songs, and Tool to write approximately one riff. How’s that for perspective?
You guys know that really good band that got fucked over a bunch of times over their last few tours in recent memory? Well, somehow, it actually happened again. I received the following unfortunate email from The Ocean’s Robin Staps:
”Today is a shit day. Our upcoming US tour just fell apart. We had been confirmed for weeks for a direct support slot on a good 6-weeks US tour in October and November, and yesterday it was decided that this tour is now being postponed to late November into December. We are not available at that time because we have tours booked in Europe for months. Our flights to the US have already been booked for weeks, and we’ve been left high and dry again… somehow we’re just not lucky over there it seems!
If anyone has a tour to offer us between October 9th and November 20th, we’re all ears :-) Hope we can still make it over somehow.”
Earthship‘s name is a funny thing, because the music the band makes takes us exactly away from Earth, not towards it. It’s strange to hear such otherworldly sounds these days, but it’s also quite refreshing. Like the best music should do, it creates vivid mental images. And that’s not something I often hear.
Exit Eden is one of numerous recent projects involving The Ocean mastermind Robin Staps, present in this band as rhythm guitarist. Like most of Staps’ projects, Eden is really good; in this case, however, the entirety of the songwriting is done by his bandmate, Jan Orberg (former drummer for The Ocean.) Orberg emplys a wide variety of techniques for his compositions. His style is far removed from Staps’ musical tendencies, even though there are definite similarities. Sadly, the album doesn’t have a whole lot to offer vocally — Orberg and drummer Dennis Bottcher sound an awful lot like The Ocean’s Mike Pilat used to sound — but that’s almost insignificant considering the musical prowess of the rest of the record.
[A couple of weeks ago The Ocean's Robin Staps took the piss out of us with a mock gear column... and now he's back to take you on a step-by-step walk-through of his actual live rig. Gear nerds, you're gonna love this one; Robin's got a very, very interesting setup. Check out our recent Rigged columns with Between the Buried and Me guitarists Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring and BTBAM drummer Blake Richardson. Between the Buried and Me, The Ocean, Job For A Cowboy (and on select dates Cephalic Carnage) are on tour through May 15th; get dates here.]
My tone obviously starts with my guitars, two Paul Reed Smith Custom 24s.
I have always loved these guitars but simply couldn’t afford them until we got an endorsement with them 2 years ago. The elegance of their design is really just the surface-level: beyond lies unrivaled playability, perfect craftsmanship, a comparably light weight and yet endless sustain. And yes, these guitars are not just pretty, they are also more sturdy than any other guitar I’ve ever had: I have had to deal with 5 broken headstocks in my career as a musician with this band, but to date my PRS guitars have remained in good order. I guess you are naturally taking better care when you are playing such a classy and precious instrument.
[Welcome back to Rigged! Last week Between the Buried and Me guitarists Paul Waggoner and Dustie Waring walked you through their live setups piece by piece. This week it's The Ocean mastermind Robin Stap's turn to show you his, um, "gear." Next week BTBAM drummer Blake Richardson breaks down his kit, and the week after that Robin Staps will be back for round 2. Between the Buried and Me and The Ocean begin their MS-sponsored tour with Job For A Cowboy (and on select dates Cephalic Carnage) this week. Get dates here.]
Hey everyone, happy to introduce you all to my rig and to some of the gear I use.
Let me start with the amp. My amp’s a classic 5150, don’t need to say much about it I guess… all tubes, nice fat tone, good attack and definition. I installed 2 pressure gauges in the front panel: they’re always telling me how much pressure is left in the air tank that’s behind the amp, so in case Loic farts too heavily and I need to inhale oxygen on stage, I never run out! Our live show is pretty sudorific anyway, ya know, gotta be prepared!
The outside is cobra leather. I killed that snake with my bare hands last summer, during our headlining tour in Burkina Faso. Had to smuggle it back to Germany, not an easy undertaking!
The wood is actually 100% mahagony which I intentionally made look like laminated fibre, because I felt the mahagony look would have compromised the cobra leather finish.
FEATURING MEMBERS OF GOD FORBID, AT THE GATES, DISFEAR, MACHINE HEAD, BETWEEN THE BURIED AND ME, THE OCEAN, JUCIFER, THE BINARY CODE, HULL, DYSRHYTHMIA, INDIAN, AND DARKEST ERA
For 2010, we decided to do something special as part of our regular end-of-year festivities here at MetalSucks — namely, ask musicians from across the vast spectrum of the metalsphere (or, in a few cases, the almost-metalsphere) what their favorite albums of the year were. Death metallers, thrash metallers, black metallers, stoners, grinders, and djenters alike graciously contributed lists to MS, and we’ll be running them in groups of ten to eleven musicians at a time twice a day for the rest of the week.
After the jump, check out the sixth group… we hope you enjoy seeing what some of metal’s heaviest hitters were into this year as much as we have!
(And please note that these are musicians and that they, um, have a lot on their minds. So some of ‘em named albums that actually came out last year. Please don’t freak out.)
Back in October, I took the time to chat via Skype with Robin Staps, founder and main songwriter of the Ocean Collective. We talked about the band’s new album Anthropocentric, discussed the unfortunate theft the band experienced while on tour, the band’s plans for U.S. touring in 2011, and more.
Yes, another theft. Again. I was already fairly disturbed by the fact that both Katatonia and Periphery have had their gear stolen in recent days, especially since I love Katatonia a lot and quite enjoy Periphery. Fortunately Katatonia did get their stuff back and it’s only a matter of time before Periphery does too, since their gear was a) instruments and b) completely custom-made. So I was slightly placated. That is, until I opened my email today and read Robin Staps’ Ocean fan subscriber email, which opened with the following under the heading “THE OCEAN Robbed in Spain”:
On Wednesday October 20th, we were robbed on the highway, 30 km from Madrid. 2 guys in a black BMW pulled us over with fake police IDs. They asked for our van papers and IDs and wanted to know if we had any money to declare. We were not skeptical at this point, as it is normal in Europe that you have to declare larger amounts of money when you’re crossing borders, so we told them we had merch money with us, and the guy wanted to see it. When we showed them the merch wallet, the guy reached through the open window, seized it and ran back to the BMW in front of us, where his colleague was waiting with running engine. Unfortunately our van and trailer don’t match the speed of a BMW, but fortunately it’s not allowed to carry guns in Europe, as otherwise we would be in jail now for shooting the guy in the face.
A frenzy is building around The Ocean; the buzz is palpable. Look no further than the comments here last week when we posted the news that “She Was the Universe,” the first song from their forthcoming album Anthropocentric, had been released.
Now it’s time for our second dose in the form of new song “The Grand Inquisitor II: Roots and Locusts” available on Stereogum. Wait a minute… Stereogum is posting about The Ocean?? I’m just as confused as you are; aren’t The Ocean, like, too well-produced, or too progressive, or too mainstream or too something for Stereogum to bother with? Well, I guess not, and I shouldn’t be complaining; it’s about fucking time this band got some recognition in circles other than… um… MetalSucks and prog dork message boards. That a blog like Stereogum — that normally traffics in the way more “indie,” black and hardcore sides of metal (when it comes to the heavy stuff) — is posting about these German geniuses really underscores the groundswell of word of mouth that The Ocean are receiving here in the U.S. right now. And this is fucking fantastic. Thank you, Brandon, for recognizing!
As for the song “The Grand Inquisitor II: Roots and Locusts,” a few seconds were all I needed to hear to know it would be one of the best tracks from Heliocentric or Anthropocentric. It’s amazing. It’s everything I want from this band and this album. And yeah, it’s heavy. Head on over to Stereogum to hear it and to read an interesting description of the song’s topical matter written by Ocean main-brain Robin Staps.
-VN
The buzz in our comments section earlier this year was that some folks were a little disappointed by The Ocean’s Heliocentric, the first of the German progressive metal band’s two-pronged 2010 album attack. Most sane folks though Heliocentric was perfectly brilliant — this writer among them — but haters are always gonna be haters and I’m just reporting it like I saw it. While frontman/genius Robin Staps always maintained that Heliocentric was the proggier, more experimental record and that its cousin, Anthropocentric, would be the heavier record fans are more accustomed to from The Ocean, we’re finally about to find out.
A press release from the band and from their U.S. label Metal Blade sent out last night is the first we’ve heard about Anthropocentric in detail. For those who thought Heliocentric wasn’t heavy enough, you’re in luck:
Musically, the album feels somehow heavier than Heliocentric. “The sound is more dense and maybe a tad more raw, which suits the songs perfectly”, comments guitar player Jonathan Nido. The album covers a similar sonic and dynamic range as Heliocentric, also including a number of calm, acoustic moments – but these are for the most part orchestrated with guitars, and not so much with piano and string section. The focus is on the heavy songs: “The album is a pretty big production, and still has a very earthy, organic feel to it”, comments Staps. “We have spent a great deal of time on the basic sound this time around, drums, bass, guitars and vocals… and at this stage I am pretty confident that this will pay off in the end!”
Anthropocentric is currently being mixed and a mastering date is set for August 25th… which means a release date can’t be far off, although none is mentioned specifically other than “November.” European Ocean fans can catch the band on tour with The Dillinger Escape Plan in October.
Now… regular readers of MS know we usually don’t do this, but the rest of the press release is so chock full of info that I’m going to post it after the jump. Lyrical themes of Anthropocentric, tracklisting, guest musicians, tour dates, oh my! Super-stoked for this album.
I hearby dub MS Maniac Mark Moritz-Rabson “Official MetalSucks Correspondent, The Ocean Division.” I can sleep easy at night knowing that any time Robin Staps so much as moves his bowels I’ll have an email waiting in my inbox from Mark, so it’s about time we rewarded the fellow with an official title. Your business cards are in the mail, good sir!
Fortunately, Robin Staps has done a whole lot more than move his bowels lately. As you all well know — or SHOULD know — The Ocean have TWO new full-length records scheduled to come out this year. The first, Heliocentric, is set to drop April 9th (Germany), 12th (Europe) and 13th (North America). Mr. Moritz-Rabson has three tidbits of Ocean-related news for you all today:
If you haven’t already you should go listen to instrumental samples from the new album at The Ocean’s official website. Between those and the clips of new music in the pre-production video above, I’m convinced Heliocentric is going to be all sorts of epic. A certain metal blog is going to be debuting at least one full track from the album before its release; stay tuned for that!
-VN
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]
Two albums that are definitely going to fuck your face right the fuck off in 2010: new releases from The Ocean, which are tentatively scheduled to be released in March and October. And the band now tells our palls at Noisecreep that the first record will be called Heliocentric and that the second record will be called Anthropocentric.
And if, based on those titles, you’re guessing that there’s some sort of thematic connection between the two albums, well, hey, you’re right! Guitarist Robin Staps explains to Chris Harris:
The MetalSucks proverbial wet-dreams of early ’08 (we have a lot of ‘em) — aka The Ocean, aka The Ocean Collective, aka Robin Staps, aka NOT this horrible band or this even horribler band — have posted an update on their MySpace page [sent to us by MS reader "grobi wunder"] announcing they’ve found a new vocalist. As we reported a month ago, The Ocean have been in the studio working on a new album; but as it turns out, they’re actually working on TWO albums, a suitable move after 2007′s two-disc ball-buster Precambrian:
“Ladies and Gentleman,
after many weeks in the dark, THE OCEAN have finally found a new vocalist.
“We are happy to announce Mr. Loïc Rossetti as tour new vocalist. “We are looking forward to weeks and months of intense touring in the future and a new era in the story of our lives!”, comments Robin Staps.“Having Loïc in the band enables me to do what I’ve always been wanting to do with this band. His voice is strong and expressive and his variety of tone and the ease with which he switches between different vocal styles really amazing. There are no limits anymore. His screams are devastating, but his most valuable quality is his singing voice, which we will employ much more on the upcoming album”.
Read the rest of the news post, including info about the TWO new albums (to be released separately, not together as Precambrian was), after the jump.
I’ve always found the changing of bands’ MySpace names to be an amusing but effective way of communicating a simple bit of news. For example:
Exclamation points necessarily included.
So it with great excitement and wonder that MS Maniac Mark Moritz-Rabson noticed a recent change in the MySpace moniker of German awesome-core collective The Ocean: “THE OCEAN (in the studio)”. No exclamation points needed because The Ocean are way too cool for such shenanigans.
No, not Tool. But Berlin, Germany’s The Ocean certainly give them a run for their money in “best band ever” category. About a year ago Kip and I saw The Ocean headline a small NYC venue — before which we interviewed guitarist/mastermind Robin Staps over a round of whiskeys — and they literally made all of the opening bands look like little girls. And we’re not talking about slouchy openers, here — Withered, Lair of the Minotaur and Kylesa opened up, in that order — but the difference was just that stark in the live setting. The Ocean ruled, everyone else drooled in comparison.
Back at the end of May, Vince and Kip stormed into The Ocean’s show at New York’s Knitting Factory with an arsenal of questions for the band’s mastermind/guitarist Robin Staps (above, far right). So many questions, in fact, that combined with Staps’ incredibly verbose and articulate answers, we ended up with a fucking book instead of the normally terse interview pieces we do, which is the reason it’s taken us so long to transcribe (well, part of the reason anyway!). But for fans of The Ocean — and I know there’s a lot of you who read MS — the wait will be well worth it when you read what Staps had to say about his band, his thoughts on touring in the U.S., the writing and recording of the band’s incredible album Precambrian, and a whole assload of other shit. Enjoy!
