I want to go on with the full length album now and actually there is much more material about it: 9 songs, 4 of them being more than 8 minutes long. With Proterozoic, The Ocean displays a wide range of skills. Each song has really been constructed with a careful progressive touch. The Ocean definitely wants to display its own atmosphere before trying other things all along Proterozoic. That's why the intro of each song can take some time but the style clearly needs that part of the process. Actually the feeling we get with this album makes me think maybe of Neurosis and Isis for sure. The intervention on Precambrian of Nick Zampiello (mastering) has certainly contributed to bring this last touch since Nick has been working with Isis indeed but also with Converge, The Red Chord and Unsane as well. But there is a little something of extreme metal also in The Ocean's music. Even though, basically, it's all about atmospheric music (on Proterozoic at least) with some heavy parts in the middle of the tracks generally. I especially like "Ectasian," which starts with a piano intro reminding me strongly of The Matrix soundtrack. And then you get some cello as well before switching to real heavy saturated doom like guitars creating a melancholic weird feeling that fades away after 4:30 when this track turns into something maybe more hardcore. Precambrian actually works this way: constantly switching from peace to wilderness and the other way around. Nevertheless you always get a specific touch from the band mainly on Proterozoic I would say.

And then the Mesoproterozoic era ends with "Stenian" which shows very interesting ideas: it is probably the song from Precambrian I love the most. I would call this hardcore singing that switches to a really delicate clean voice from time to time. There is also a violin that brings almost a folk touch. And you even get a very quick blast beat in this one. Just to let you know how complete the music of The Ocean can be sometimes... In this song I especially love the break with beautiful clean singing supported by a soft snare part on drums.

What makes this CD so interesting is mainly the mixture of influences. Very often, you have some kind of "birdy" clean guitars as well (guitars mimicking a bird singing I would say...) reminding me of Night Time Birds from The Gathering. Something very aerial... On "Calymmian" for instance it's more than just a detail: it is softly introducing the song to you... Finally "Cryogenian" starts with a Sins of Thy Beloved-like melody around which the whole song is arranged. It's the shortest track of the album apart from the intro. It's an instrumental song with a very strong classical touch. The global emotion here is sadness. The interpretation is free but I will give you mine: I think the band wanted to describe the end of something that we reached already a long time ago though. Understand: the end of true feelings, real emotions that music can deliver sometimes. The part of history that we get here is really something I appreciate but there is also a metaphoric idea behind it. I like to think of "Cryogenian" just as the last sincere song ever before the world turns into something based on appearences, something much more light, a kind of vacuum actually. So I would sum up saying that this album represents a kind of manifest against all the more or less modern shitty trends. It reminds us that authenticity used to rule the world... Maybe it's still there, somewhere, hidden in the dark but most of the people ignore it and don't care about it anymore: The Ocean wants you to complete your mission... Waking up this precambrian dinosaur!

written by Hubert Chapuis

Playing time: 83:00