The Ocean Premiere “Devonian: Nascent” Performance Video From Upcoming Live Album
The Ocean’s upcoming live release, Phanerozoic Live, is no ordinary live release. Consisting of two separate shows, capturing a moment in time during the pre-vax days of early 2021, the 3xCD/DVD set sees the progressive metal masters perform each of their most recent albums in full in entirely different isolated settings.
Phanerozoic I was streamed live from Pier 2, a big hall in the port of Bremen, Germany, on March 25, 2021, with full production and lighting for an invisible crowd (but over 1,500 watching worldwide). The band began rehearsing Phanerozoic II in the days immediately following that event, and the resulting performance, intimate and stripped down, aired on April 16 as part of Roadburn Redux, the digital edition of the annual Roadburn Festival.
Today we get our first taste of the Phanerozoic I performance, and fans of The Ocean will not be surprised in the slightest that it’s positively mesmerizing!
Band leader Robin Staps explains of that first performance:
“We wanted to give people two totally different experiences. In Bremen, we had the chance to record a proper Ocean live show, the way people know us. We played facing towards the front of the stage, to an invisible crowd, essentially to a huge empty room… but we knew people were watching, even if we didn’t see them. There was the same rush of adrenaline right before going on stage as you get before going on at any big open air festival… maybe with a little extra anxiety added, because knowing that so many people are watching you without being able to see them yourself was super weird.”
Staps adds of the second:
“We wanted to do something more cinematic visually, and at the same time more intimate, we wanted to capture the feeling of the 6 of us in a relatively small, confined space, facing each other, in a circle… without the crowd playing any role or being any part of this equation. It was March and the room that we spent the whole day in was cold, but that was part of the vibe. We had to warm up our fingers constantly.”
Watch “Devonian: Nascent” below. Phanerozoic Live comes out on November 26 via Metal Blade. Meanwhile, Pelagic Records, Staps’ own label, is selling a special limited edition box set with actual prehistoric fossils included (“hundreds of Moroccan trilobites, 450 million (!) years of age, had to be sourced from global trade fairs,” press copy reads) because of course they are.
Upcoming The Ocean tour dates:
01/10 – BE Antwerp, Trix – Pelagic Label Night
02/10 – NL Nijmegen, Doornrosje – Soulcrusher Festival
12/11 – DE Leipzig, Felsenkeller w/ Kokomo, Fargo
13/11 – DE Neunkirchen, Neue Gebläsehalle – Gloomar Festival
14/11 – DE Dortmund, Junkyard
28/12 – DE Hamburg, Gruenspan
PHANEROZOIC – CHAPTER IV – EUROPE 2022
w/ pg.lost, Hypno5e & Psychonaut:
07/01 – DE Berlin, Hole44
08/01 – CZ Prague, Nova Chmelnice
09/01 – AT Vienna, Szene
10/01 – DE Munich, Backstage
11/01 – IT Milan, Legend
12/01 – CH Lucerne, Sedel
13/01 – FR Lyon, CCO Villeurbanne
14/01 – ES Barcelona, Boveda
15/01 – ES Madrid, Caracol
16/01 – PT Lisbon, LAV
17/01 – ES Bilbao, Stage Live
18/01 – FR Toulouse, Rex
19/01 – FR Bordeaux, Krakatoa
20/01 – FR Nantes, Ferrailleur
21/01 – FR Lille, The Black Lab
22/01 – NL Utrecht, De Helling
23/01 – BE Brussels, Botanique
24/01 – FR Paris, Machine
25/01 – FR Colmar, Grillen
26/01 – DE Cologne, Gebäude9
27/01 – DE Wiesbaden, Schlachthof
28/01 – DE Hannover, Bei Chez Heinz
29/01 – DE Osnabrück, Kleine Freiheit
