OCEAN, THE
PHANEROZOIC I: PALAEOZOIC

Since 2001, the Berlin-based musician collective The Ocean have released 7 critically acclaimed studio albums, and a split EP with Japanese post-rock legends Mono. With an ever-changing lineup of various on- and off-stage musicians and visual artists, the relentlessly touring group have become well known for their immense, mind-expanding live shows, which they have carried into the most remote corners of the globe, from Siberian squats to colonial theatres in Ecuador. Over the course of their storied career, The Ocean have toured with Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Anathema, Between The Buried And Me a n d Devin Townsend, and have appeared on major festivals including Roskilde, Dour, Pukkelpop, Roadburn, Wacken, With Full Force, Summer Slaughter, Summer Breeze and Graspop. The band's own Pelagic Records has also become one of Europe's leading labels for post-rock and post-metal, with a catalog of 120 releases since 2009. “The Ocean do for earth science class what Mastodon did for Melville: make learning brutal", Decibel wrote about 2007's Precambrian, Revolver describing it as a “Teutonic paean to Earth's geology“. 2013's seminal Pelagial, described as “a filmic ode to shifting moods, dichotomous influences and the musical personification of sinking towards the planet's deepest underwater points“ by Rock Sound, was a milestone for the band, and their most conceptual work to date, and was ranked #3 at LoudWire's “Best Metal Albums Of 2013”, and #5 in About.com's “2013 Best Heavy Metal Albums“. After 5 years of touring on Pelagial, the band started recording their 8th studio album in February 2018, split into two volumes to be separately released in 2018 and 2020 respectively, titled Phanerozoic. The Phanerozoic eon succeeded the Precambrian supereon, spanning a 500 millionyear period leading to the present day. It has witnessed the evolution and diversification of plant and animal life on Earth, and the partial destruction of it during 5 mass extinction events. Conceptually and musically, The Ocean’ s Phanerozoic is the missing link between the albums Precambrian and Heliocentric / Anthropocentric.