The Ocean’s latest album, Holocene, out May 19 via Pelagic Records, is a powerful and thought-provoking work of art. The album is a concept record that explores the current state of the world, and it is full of raw emotion and passion.
“Writing-wise, this album is different from previous albums in that most of the tracks are based on musical ideas initially written by our synth dude, Peter (Voigtmann),” says guitarist Robin Staps. “He sent me those ideas during mid lockdown and I ‘oceanized’ them by adding guitars, drums, and new parts. For the first time ever, it’s not been me starting a song with a blank page but working with basic ideas that someone else had written, and that was really inspiring and different.
“Production-wise, we wanted this album to have a huge and fat yet organic and more intimate sound, with a big and roomy natural drum sound,” he continues. “So a lot of contradictions that were difficult to reconcile. We reached out to a handful of good people we knew for test mixes, some rather big names among them, but nothing was getting close enough to how we wanted this album to sound. So we finally ended up with an old friend and ally, Karl Daniel Lidén, for mix and mastering. He understood what we wanted and knew how to get there.”
When it comes to lyrical themes, the album focuses a lot on the social patterns the band noticed during the pandemic.
“Holocene, the album title, for us, is synonymous for the modern and the postmodern age, so all the lyrics on this album deal with topics that flared up during the pandemic, when the album was written: the weirdness of that time, the social segregation even among close circles of friends that came with it,” Staps adds. “Each track has its own topic; “Preboreal” is Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, a book written long before the internet which seems almost prophetic now in the light of our current image-dominated instagram and YouTube society, where mere representation is replacing actual content and critical thinking is lost along the way.”
The record is still heavy but has more electronic influence than previous albums.
“It’s just achieved by different means,” he says of the album’s heaviness. “The first really heavy guitar riff doesn’t appear until the second half of track four, “Atlantic,” and while it’s possible to enjoy isolated tracks on their own, I think the album gains its real power if you listen through from the beginning to the end. There is a buildup of dynamics and intensity throughout the album that stretches beyond individual tracks.”
All in all, this record represents a new step forward for this band as they have transformed their sound.
“There’s a line in the lyrics of the last track, “Subatlantic,” that goes: “Prepare for departure”… and this is what we’re doing. This album is a departure in many ways—a departure from old songwriting approaches, and a departure sound wise, too. We don’t really know yet where this departure will take us, but Holocene is for sure the last album of the paleontology-inspired album series that we started with Precambrian in 2007 and continued with the Phanerozoic I and II albums in 2018 and 2020. It’s time for something new now.”
Photo courtesy of Derek Tobias.
