The Ocean – Anthropocentric (2010)

A few months after the release of “Heliocentric”, we get “Anthropocentric”, the more aggressive and crushing continuation (and conclusion) to the band’s critique on Christianity started with “Heliocentric”. While The Ocean still incorporates some of their traditional classical instruments in “Anthropocentric”, this release is by far much more aggressive and straight forward than their previous one.

With another 50 minutes of monumental Progressive Sludge/Metal, the band greatly enhances the listening experience of “Heliocentric”, we found ourselves playing both records back to back in order to get the full effect and conceptual message of this very well crafted releases. The band immediately starts with a very crushing track in “Anthropocentric”, often weaving back and forth between pounding riffs with harsh vocals and brilliant clean vocal harmonies and more melodic guitar lines.

As you can expect from The Ocean, this release is also very unpredictable, since when you think you have things figured out the band pulls a song like “The Grand Inquisitor III: A Tiny Grain of Faith”. This song in particular made us thing we had a track form a different album in our play list, but it’s equally magical as the rest of the songs in this album and it has its own hypnotic charm. With “Wille Zum Untergang” we also had a similar reaction, but a bit less ‘shocking’, making this track our personal favorite of the album.

The Ocean is never shy about experimenting and trying different things as we all know, but their core of Sludge and Progressive elements is what makes them a very unique and good Metal band. Never taking the eye away from the ball, we get some brilliant crushing songs in tracks like “Sewers of the Soul”, “Heaven TV” and “She was the Universe” mixing different elements and creating very diverse musical textures through the album.

There is no need to say that all members of The Ocean are great musicians, and since on “Anthropocentric” all ‘permanent’ members participated in the composition of the music, we get an even richer sound that comes from everybody in the band. The band does not need to fully rely on guest musicians since at their core, The Ocean has enough talent to craft intricate compositions and pull them off in the live setting.

In general, we think that “Anthropocentric” is as good and sometimes even better (since we like heavy shit) than “Heliocentric”. There is a great core of musicians and ideas in this band and they are excellent in making them come to life. A must have release for people that want something more out of their Metal.

Release: November 9th, 2010

Country: Germany