Pelagial, the new maritime-themed studio offering from progressive metal revolutionists THE OCEAN, entered the Billboard Heatseekers Chart at #10 upon its first week of release! In addition, Pelagial landed at #55 on the Billboard Top Independent Album Chart, #26 on the Billboard Current Hard Music Chart and #39 on the Billboard Top Hard Rock Chart. In Canada, the record ranked in at #23 on the Hard Music Chart and #194 on the Top 200 Current Albums Chart. Elsewhere, Pelagial hit #72 on the German Media Market Chart and #68 on the German Media Control Control Top 100 Chart.
Their deepest and most accomplished work to date, THE OCEAN‘s Pelagial is a 53-minute exploratory composition written, recorded, mixed and intended to-be-performed-live as one single piece of music. Centered around all five pelagic depth zones — epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathyalpelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadopelagic – Pelagial quite literally submerges its listeners into an aquatic journey that is at once tranquil and terrifying. Pelagial begins rather light and progressively gets heavier and slows as the band reaches the unfathomable depths of the hadopelagic zone, characterized by complete darkness and a thousandfold increased pressure as compared to surface level. Said Decibel Magazine in a recent review of the massive undertaking: “Where the band was once steeped in sludgy noise/metalcore with orchestral interludes, they’ve become more luxurious, experimental and textural. Pelagial…further continues that shift, working on multi-tiered levels and drawing from DEP-inspired chaos, Opeth-like moods and Between The Buried And Me genre fiddling. It’s an album that strives to be all things at once without crossing into a ‘look-at-me’ mess.”
Pelagial was mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren (Opeth, Katatonia, Witchcraft) at Fascination Street Studios in Örebrö, Sweden and comes as a double CD, which includes a vocal and an instrumental version of the album.
Check out the special clip video of the record currently posted at Invisible Oranges at THIS LOCATION as well as a full stream of the instrumental version, courtesy of Spin Magazine, HERE. Order your copy of Pelagial at: http://www.theoceancollective.com/pelagial.
THE OCEAN will return to North America as part of the seventh annual Summer Slaughter Tour, presented by Indie Merch Store, ESP and Guitar World. The band will appear alongside The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals As Leaders, Periphery, Norma Jean, Cattle Decapitation, Revocation, Aeon and more. As a precursor to their Stateside takeover, the band will play four special European shows with Mastodon. See confirmed tour dates below.
THE OCEAN w/ Mastodon:
5/31/2013 Essigfabrik – Cologne, DE
6/01/2013 Garage/Kleiner Club – Saarbrücken, DE (no Mastodon)
6/02/2013 Atelier – Luxembourg, LU
6/05/2013 Lido – Berlin, DE
6/06/2013 Beatpol – Dresden, DE
THE OCEAN on The Summer Slaughter Tour:
7/19/2013 Regency Ballrom – San Francisco, CA
7/20/2013 House of Blues – Los Angeles, CA
7/21/2013 The Observatory/Constellation Room – Santa Ana, CA
7/24/2013 Diamond Ballroom – Oklahoma City, OK
7/26/2013 House of Blues – Dallas, TX
7/27/2013 House of Blues – Houston, TX
7/29/2013 House of Blues – Lake Buena Vista, FL
7/30/2013 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
7/31/2013 Old City Courtyard – Knoxville, TN
8/01/2013 House of Blues – Myrtle Beach, SC
8/02/2013 The Filmore Silver Springs – Silver Springs, MD
8/03/2013 The Palladium – Worcester, MA
8/04/2013 The Trocadero – Philadelphia, PA
8/07/2013 Best Buy Theater – New York, NY
8/08/2013 Sound Academy – Toronto, ON
8/09/2013 Metropolis – Montreal, QC
8/10/2013 Upstate Concert Hall – Clifton Park, NY
8/11/2013 The Majestic Theatre – Detroit, MI
8/12/2013 House of Blues – Chicago, IL
8/13/2013 The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
8/14/2013 Station 4 – St. Paul, MN
8/16/2013 Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO
“The sixth album from German post-metal doombringers THE OCEAN is huge… In the course of the record, tender piano interludes get stomped on by Mastodon-shaped footprints, lush strings work next to bulldozing double-kick work, and, at the end, the submarine crashes at Melvins tempos.” – Spin
“…as fantastic as it is dense. The concepts are dense. The music is dense. The two hundred and something individual tracks, all mastered together as one single piece of music, scream density like being sat on by a bull elephant.” – The Monolith
“Pelagial is brilliantly written, expertly executed and filled with the kind of songwriting most bands can only dream of.” – Crave online
“Pelagial resonates so deeply because its sonic continuity is matched with shifting, unified composition. The album viscerally depicts the spectrum of submersion while highlighting the musicians’ versatility and cohesion. The band has never written more intriguing music, and THE OCEAN COLLECTIVE has never been a more apt name.” – MetalSucks
“…a journey within itself…” – Metal Insider
“…destined to be one of the year’s best releases.” – Echoes And Dust
“Creating music with a real meaning cannot be taken as a hobby. Either you put everything into it and make your message known or you don’t. Their correlation between diving deeper into the ocean and diving into the inner workings of the human mind is astounding…you would be a complete fool to not pick up this true work of art.” – New Noise Magazine
“Pelagial is quite possibly THE OCEAN’s most ambitious record to date – not only conceptually, but musically as well… THE OCEAN have been on the cutting edge of progressive songwriting since their inception, but Pelagial may be the record that finally puts them ahead of their peers.” – Heavy Blog Is Heavy
“Beyond impressive. It’s godly almost; perfectionism to the point that every minute flaw forces you to question whether it’s you or the album that’s to blame. It’s an album with a layered depth rarely found in modern music that never demands your exploration of those depths in order to appreciate the music.” – Axis of Metal
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