Berlin-based atmospheric post metal juggernaut The Ocean (Collective) will release their new album, Holocene, on May 19.
Holocene is the follow-up to their critically acclaimed Phanerozoic double album and sees The Ocean add a closing chapter to their palaeontology-inspired album series, presenting a gear shift towards the electronic world while redefining heaviness at the same time.
The band have today premiered a music video for the album’s second single, “Parabiosis.” Filmed on tour in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, the video shows the artificially-aged band members sign up for an “eternal youth” program and shows them ageing in reverse.
The band comment that Parabiosis is “about stem cell research and the cosmetics industry’s war against ageing and our society’s quest for rejuvenation elixirs, plastic surgery etc, which leads to the question of— how far can and shall we go regarding bio-engineering and medicinal progress? The cult of eternal youth has lead to death being hidden from our everyday lives. You literally see no old people in our modern inner cities anymore, everyone is young and healthy and the sick and dying are locked away in clinics and retirement homes where they won’t remind the general public of the fact that we are all going to die one day, which keeps us stuck on a hamster wheel of spending the time of our lives working jobs we hate to afford things we don’t need…”
2020’s Phanerozoic II ended with a track titled “Holocene”, and now it’s clear that this track was pointing in the direction of things to come, both conceptually and musically. The dark, synth-driven track Holocene ends abruptly and yet connects seamlessly with the beginning of the new album: the haunting synth sounds of opener “Preboreal”, recently released as the first single off the album on January 16.
Holocene tracklisting
1. Preboreal
2. Boreal
3. Sea of Reed
4. Atlantic
5. Subboreal
6. Unconformities (feat. Karin Park)
7. Parabiosis
8. Subatlantic
Pre orders are available now
https://listen.pelagic-records.com/theocean-holocene
