1 – The Ocean (origin and meaning of the band’s name, short bio with highlights, discography, etc):We are a band, or: collective, from Berlin, Germany. There is no precise »origin« of our name; the term just came up one day. First we hesitated to use it because it seemed a little too simplistic (thus inappropriate of our musical style). But then we realized that truly ingenious things are inevitably simple – so we decided to stick to it. What's great about the name is that there's not the meaning. It has so many facets and evokes so many different associations – from the origin of all life to the end of it; from a calm, peaceful sunset scenery to a devastating hurricane.
The whole thing started back in 2000. Robin had just moved to Berlin with a bunch of songs on a four-track Minidisc recorder and started looking for people to form a band. It took about two years and forty musicians until a stable line-up was established and first live shows could be made. In 2003, we signed to Make My Day Records and released our first (official) record Fogdiver. The next year, Fluxion came out, which saw the introduction of vocals and big-scale orchestrations including classical instruments such as cellos, flutes and trombones. The project soon got too big for Make My Day, so we signed with Metal Blade instead, releasing Aeolian in 2005 and Precambrian in 2007.
2 – “Precambrian” (writing & recording process):Most of the basic ideas developed during an Australia trip Robin did in summer 2005, and in the Berlin winter that followed. Actually, Robin conceived quite a lot of the material on a four-string guitar on beaches and in hostel rooms on his trip. Back in Berlin, he elaborated them further; but since we were on tour for four months in 2006 and Robin recorded an album with another band of his, he didn't have the time to work on the Precambrian material until late 2006. In April 2007, we went to northern Finland for three weeks in order to record drums and the basic guitar tracks in a barn in the middle of nowhere. Everything else we recorded at home in our Oceanland studios, as we have done ever since, with some of our guest vocalists cut their tracks at their respective places in the U.S., the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden. Finally, we had the whole thing mixed in New York City and mastered in Cambridge, MA. There are 26 musicians playing on the album, so you get the idea. To manage this massive polyphony, to handle the huge amount of tracks and still keep the song focused and work out its essence, its core, was the biggest challenge we have ever taken.
3 – “Hadean / Archaean” VS “Proterozoic”:The Precambrian was the first chapter in the evolution of planet earth, its beginning is set to about 4,5 billion years before now. Geologists subdivide the Precambrian into 2 or 3 eras, Hadean / Archaean and Proterozoic, and in the case of our album, the 2 discs carry these names. These eras are further subdivided into geological periods, which function as song-titles here. So the whole concept evolves around the early days of mother earth, which was then a terrifying place devoid of life and reigned by sulfur and red-glowing streams of lava... During the Proterozoic, the earth started to cool down a little bit and the atmosphere started to build, and first simple forms of life prang up. All this is reflected in the music: The Hadean / Archaean part of the disc is raw and brutal, continuing where 'Aeolian' left off, with a basic instrumentation of drums, bass, guitars and vocals. The Proterozoic part of the disc is much more multi-layered and complex, more mellow and vast, still crushing and heavy for the most part, but with plenty of atmospheric moments that give the listener space to breathe in between the eruptions.
4 – Lyrics (influences, themes, messages) and the main lyrical concept of this record:
The Precambrian was a time before life on earth. Apparently, it doesn't make much sense to write about nothing but rocks and volcanic euprions, so we did not stick to the album theme in an overly strict way. There are still certain references and metaphors going back to the Precambrian theme, but the lyrics essentially address human issues.
There isn't the overall lyrical concept on the album, but what ties everything together are Lautréamont's Chants of Maldoror, which is certainly the biggest lyrical influence on this album. The Chants are so full of spite, passion, dark irony and profound hatred of man and his virtues, so to speak, that we realized our album could be kind of a soundtrack to them. So it was only natural to try and fit some of those blasphemous words onto the music, and we ended up having two songs exclusively employing entire passages of the Chants: »Mesoarchaean« and »Neoarchaean,« both on »Hadean/Archaean.« There are more parts here and there and in addition, the booklet of »Proterozoic« is interspersed with quotes from the Chants, some of them using great oceanic imagery: »You will not in my last hours, find me surrounded by priests. I want to die lulled by the waves of the stormy sea.«
But it's not just Lautréamont; the song »Mesoarchaean,« for example, is actually a poem by Baudelaire. Nietzsche's »Untimely Meditations II« have left their mark on the song »Rhyacian«, and the song »De Profundis« is a poem by Georg Trakl.
5 – Album frontcover / artwork (who, why, meaning, …):The cover depicts magmatic bubbles, black lava printed in UV gloss on a lavish digipak with physically cut-out diecut holes, through which you see the booklets shining through, with more images of black volcanic rock, creating the impression of depth. When you slide out the booklets, you see red glowing lava shining thorugh those diecut holes.
The artwork was done by Martin Kvamme, once again. Working with Martin is simply amazing. He is such a creative and talented artist, I guess there's nobody else like him out there. He perfectly understands where we're coming from and does his best to satisfy us, and realize his own artistic vision at the same time. We admire all of his works, and what we really like about him is that he doesn't have one particular style. He is extremely versatile and can do everything and adapt to a concept and really push it and develop it. You never know what to expect when you work with him, but we have ben very pleasantly surprised every time. As always, we wanted the artwork to reflect the overall atmosphere of our music. And after the great job Martin had done on Aeolian, it was only natural to ask him again.
6 – Musicians / Guest Musicians (26!):Yeah, there's a huge number of guest musicians on our album. For example, we've got Tomas Hallbom from Breach again, singing a duett with Rene Nocon, an singer rather unknown outside of Berlin, on »Stenian.« Then there is Nate Newton of Converge appearing on two of the »Hadean/Archaean« tracks. There is Caleb Scofield of Cave In on the track »Orosirian,« together with our new main vocalist Mike Pilat. There is Eric Kalsbeek of Textures singing the song »Mesoarchaean.« We also had the honor to work with pro-musicians from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
7 – Musical and other kind of influences:The range of musical influences among our band members is pretty wide. We do have some common denominators, though, such as Breach, Refused, Neurosis, Meshuggah, or Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Apart from that, you can find pretty much everything in the band: we've got fans of Old-school Hardcore, Dub, Black Metal, Electronica, Classical music, Grindcore, etc.
And then there's a couple of non-musical influences as well. We've talked about the French symbolists already, or two of them; then there's people like Edgar Allan Poe for example, whose »The City in the Sea« was the basis of our song by the same title; then there's our »Austerity«, which was inspired by Bertolt Brecht (both songs off Aeolian). Surrealist poetry also had quite an impact on our lyrics. The works of Andre Breton might be the basis for our next album, but we'll see...
8 – Metal Blade Records:The cooperation with Metal Blade started after we parted ways with our previous label. We checked out a couple of alternatives, talked to people here and there, and went for Metal Blade, whose offer was by far the most interesting one. And we don't regret it; Metal Blade has been supporting us ever since and never tried to encroach in our artistic freedom. They have never interfered with our recording processes or otherwise tried to take control over where the whole project is going.
9 – Tour to promote the record:We've just returned from a European tour with Intronaut, which was awesome, and we'll be on tour again in March with Rotten Sound and Victims, which is gonna be a great package; hands down the most unusual one we've been part of so far. After that we will play a week of headliner shows in France and then go to Eastern Europe including Greece and Russia, before going to the US in May. We will spend the better part of 2008 on the road.
10 – Final Message:Never forget that Precambrian is just one of five albums we've put out so far. Check out the other ones too, Fogdiver for example, to get an idea of the entire range of what The Ocean is capable of!
-Questions: RDS
