The Ocean Collective (or just The Ocean) is not a band to be taken lightly, even if that were possible. They are musicians in a very classical sense, an approach that does not just strive for some catchy effect as one track moves to the next, but rather the intent is to complete a fully realized work of art. Many metal bands have tried to attempt this of course, with varying results. After all, it's this more orthodox approach to music that defines much of progressive metal. With their latest album, Pelagial, The Ocean gives us another offering of forward-looking metal that, if anything, disowns the silly "post-metal" moniker and comes to embody the future of progressive metal itself.
Sonically, the album is what you'd imagine if, in the world of Mastodon's Leviathan, the boat sinks and you continue listening as the album plunges into the deep, dark ocean. The Ocean puts their talent for both soft soaring moments and crushing metal blasts through an interesting metaphorical journey from the ocean's surface into the dark unexplored ocean floor. The band takes the listener through all five stages of depth: epipelagic, mesopelagic, bathyalpelagic, abyssopelagic, and hadopelagic. The point is of course to take the music (as well as the listener) to darker and heavier places as the album progresses. As the album revolves around this central theme, it is best taken all in one listen.
That's not to say it doesn't have standout moments. This is definitely the band's most accessible album in years, as it is immediately more engaging and exciting than much of what came out on 2010's Anthropocentric. In other words, its greatest strength as a progressive record is that it manages to be experimental while not requiring too much patience on the part of the listener to get interested. That said, I found the album much better on the second listen than on the first. That may sound like a criticism, but as some prog stuff can take up to 5 listens for me to really get, that's saying quite a lot.
8/10
Favorite Songs: "Bathyalpelagic I: Impasses", "Bathyalpelagic III: Disequillibrated", "Hadopelagic II: Let Them Believe", and "Benthic: The Origin of Our Wishes"
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