THE OCEAN RELEASE ANOTHER NEW SONG!

A frenzy is building around The Ocean; the buzz is palpable. Look no further than the comments here last week when we posted the news that “She Was the Universe,” the first song from their forthcoming album Anthropocentric, had been released.

Now it’s time for our second dose in the form of new song “The Grand Inquisitor II: Roots and Locusts” available on Stereogum. Wait a minute… Stereogum is posting about The Ocean?? I’m just as confused as you are; aren’t The Ocean, like, too well-produced, or too progressive, or too mainstream or too something for Stereogum to bother with? Well, I guess not, and I shouldn’t be complaining; it’s about fucking time this band got some recognition in circles other than… um… MetalSucks and prog dork message boards. That a blog like Stereogum — that normally traffics in the way more “indie,” black and hardcore sides of metal (when it comes to the heavy stuff) — is posting about these German geniuses really underscores the groundswell of word of mouth that The Ocean are receiving here in the U.S. right now. And this is fucking fantastic. Thank you, Brandon, for recognizing!

As for the song “The Grand Inquisitor II: Roots and Locusts,” a few seconds were all I needed to hear to know it would be one of the best tracks from Heliocentric or Anthropocentric. It’s amazing. It’s everything I want from this band and this album. And yeah, it’s heavy. Head on over to Stereogum to hear it and to read an interesting description of the song’s topical matter written by Ocean main-brain Robin Staps.

-VN