The Ocean: New Album Coming in 2013!
When Robin Staps wrote an editorial response to my article about the relevance of modern metal vocalists (or irrelevance, as it were), he revealed a few details about the next Ocean album, namely that he was toying with the idea of decreasing the role of vocals this time around. Now the band’s made it official through an announcement on Facebook and they’ve shared some more details about the album, as well as an upcoming live DVD. Here’s the post:
2013 will be a busy year for THE OCEAN. We will release a new album on April 26 (GSA), April 29 (Europe) and April 30 (USA) 2013 on Metal Blade Records. To support the release, THE OCEAN will embark on a 3 weeks European tour with CULT OF LUNA in April and May, including a performance at Roadburn Festival on April 20th.
The new album will be a single album containing 52 minutes of new music. It will be mixed by Jens Bogren (Opeth, Katatonia, …) in January and will come in 2 versions: instrumental and with vocals. Comments The Ocean’s Robin Staps: “The album was originally written to be instrumental, but in the end me and Loic couldn’t help but try out a few things vocalwise and we soon got pretty excited… so there will be vocals on the album; however, we want everyone to have both versions, and we are also planning to perform the album live that way – with and without vocals.”
The special edition of the album will be released along with a film by Craig Murray (Nine Inch Nails).
The 3xDVD “Collective Oblivion” has been postponed for a release later in the year, but shall also see the light of day in 2013.
This is happy news on many fronts: 1) I’ve enjoyed everything The Ocean have ever released, but double-albums always come with some level of bloat so I’m glad this will only be a single-disc affair. Lean n’ mean. 2) I’m very curious to hear an instrumental Ocean album, so it’s cool of the band to release both an instrumental and vocal version of the same piece of music. 3) New Ocean music!
Sucks that the live DVD is being pushed back, although I honestly really don’t care much: live DVDs are one-and-done affairs… you watch them once, then they sit on the shelf forever. I’ve stopped buying them entirely.
[via The Monolith]
