The Ocean Collective: Palaeozoic ALBUM REVIEW

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The Ocean Collective - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic

This 2018 release by German collaborative project The Ocean Collective (a.k.a. The Ocean) takes a very interesting approach to conceptual music: The record is themed around a geological era, and the songs represent the different geological periods the era contains. This, along with the collective's willingness to experiment and thread new waters makes Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic an intriguing listen.

 
The Ocean have tried the prehistoric adaptation before with their 2007's Precambrian, to relative success. Now Phanerozoic serves as a continuation, in two parts, of the geological history of the Earth as told by The Collective. Being a collective the band isn't afraid of featuring elements external to the band in its compositions, such as Jonas Renkse of Katatonia fame, who offers his solemn vocals on the Devonian track. The instrumentals are wonderfully superb, with the guitars being full of texture and the drums full of power. Permian: The Great Dying and Devonian: Nascent are grandiose and pack some real emotional thrust, and consistently leave me in awe. Silurian: Age of Sea Scorpions is awesome and I took a great liking to the eurypterid theme. The weakest part of the record are the vocals, and the band seems to be aware of this since they released a instrumental version of this record devoid of vocals, which makes the instrumentals really shine.

The following record that makes up this Phanerozoic series, Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic / Cenozoic, has already been released (late 2020). I have yet to listen to it, so I can't yet judge the Phanerozoic as a whole. I can, however, judge the quality of Palaeozoic: And it fare pretty well. I enjoy the heaviness of the music, I enjoy the themes and I specially enjoy how thought out and textured everything is. In the end I still listen to it front to back a lot, and definitely recommend it.

Verdict: Buy it on vinyl

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Lex Fonseca
Music is the closest you can get to a waking dream, isn't it? Let's explore that, shall we.

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