The Ocean - Phanerozoic Live - 2CD + DVD DIGISLEEVE

The Berliners present an unusual live album that is a testimony of strange times: their Phanerozoic concept album performed live in its entirety at a time when no shows were happening anywhere in the world. 3 LPs / 2 CDs, DVD and access to HD video download and streaming.
On September 25, 2020, in the middle of the global pandemic, The Ocean released their 9th studio album Phanerozoic II, the concluding episode of a conceptual trilogy that began with Precambrian 13 years before – and even without any touring to support the new album release, Phanerozoic II entered the official German album charts at #9.
With no end of lockdowns in sight, the band decided to thank their fans for the support with 2 streaming concerts, performing both Phanerozoic albums in their entirety: Phanerozoic I was streamed live from Pier 2, a big hall in the port of Bremen, on March 25, 2021. With more than 1.500 tickets sold, it was the most successful show of the popular “Club 100” streaming events series thus far.
The day after this event, the band retreated to synth player and sound designer Peter Voigtmann's rural studio “Die Mühle”, just outside of Bremen. Here, the band rehearsed and recorded Phanerozoic II in its entirety during the following 3 days. The performance aired on April 16 as part of the digital edition of Roadburn Festival, this year abtly named Roadburn Redux.
Both shows couldn't have been more different: where the first part boasts with a pompous, mesmerizing lighting production on a big stage, the 2nd part is quite the opposite: intimate, almost cosy, focused on musicianship rather than performance. A stripped down setup in a dark barn, with moody, minimal but not any less efficient lighting.
“We wanted to give people 2 totally different experiences”, says band leader Robin Staps. “In Bremen, we had the chance to record a proper Ocean live show, the way people know us. We played facing towards the front of the stage, to an invisible crowd, essentially to a huge empty room... but we knew people were watching, even if we didn't see them. There was the same rush of adrenaline right before going on stage as you get before going on at any big open air festival... maybe with a little extra anxiety added, because knowing that so many people are watching you without being able to see them yourself was super weird.”
Despite these surreal circumstances, The Ocean's performance in Bremen felt like a real live show, for everyone watching: the energy spilled over to thousands of people from all over the world watching from their homes, who clotted the band's instagram story with hundreds of shares and comments. The crazy response was another testimony to how much we were all missing live music at this time: to watch a band connect with their crowd at home in this very intense way was an experience that was oddly beautiful and frustrating in equal measure.
After this special and invigorating experience, it was clear that the 2nd part had to be intentionally different.
“We wanted to do something more cinematic visually, and at the same time more intimate, we wanted to capture the feeling of the 6 of us in a relatively small, confined space, facing each other, in a circle... without the crowd playing any role or being any part of this equation”, says Staps. “It was March and the room that we spent the whole day in was cold, but that was part of the vibe. We had to warm up our fingers
constantly.”
Much like the first part, the band performed the album live, all together in one room, several times during one long day. The best take was chosen, then mixed by long term live sound engineer Chris Edrich. Dana Schecter (Swans, Insect Ark) created animations of the iconic “collision” motive of the Phanerozoic II album art, specifically for the premiere at Roadburn Festival 2 weeks later, where it aired on Friday night as the highlight and headlining act of the band's own Pelagic Records showcase.
The logistics and preparations for these 2 events were as challenging as one can imagine: bass player Mattias Hägerstrand flew in from Stockholm and had to quarantine in Berlin before rehearsals. None of the band members (or anyone their age group, for that matter) was vaxxed at that time, and before the Bremen event the entire band and crew were tested outside of the venue, before anyone was allowed to enter.
Masks had to be worn at all times until show start, even during soundcheck. Phanerozoic Live is a live album like no other – it is a live album that was recorded in a cultural vacuum, a bizarre time that we will remember for the rest of our lives: a time when the world as we knew it suddenly stopped spinning. It is a live album that does without all the qualities that we usually appreciate about a live album: without the sounds of a cheering, exited crowd. But it is the very absence of this, it is the eery silence between the songs that reminds us of what we miss most, and that gives these recordings a rare intensity and power.
Founded by guitarist and composer Robin Staps at the dawn of the millennium, The Ocean immediately stood apart. Coalescing around a shared vision of limitless sonic exploration and relentless heaviness, the German ensemble swiftly gained a formidable reputation within the post rock, post metal and experimental hardcore scene.
Simultaneously revered as one of the most devastating live bands in modern heavy music, The Ocean became a regular fixture on the European festival circuit, appearing on metal festival bills of the likes of Hellfest, Wacken, Resurrection or Summer Breeze as much as on mainstream rock open airs like Roskilde, Dour or Pukkelpop, and tastemaker's indoor boutique festivals like Roadburn or Dunk! Over the course of their storied career, The Ocean have toured Europe and North America with influential artists such as Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, Cult Of Luna, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Anathema, Between The Buried
And Me and Devin Townsend. The band's own Pelagic Records has become one of the world's leading labels for post-rock and post-metal, with a catalogue of over 200 physical releases since 2009.O
Over the last two decades, the band have been in a perpetual state of evolution, releasing a steady succession of groundbreaking and acclaimed albums that have all sought to push heavy music forward, embracing the cerebral, the primal and the inexplicable in equal measure. From the ominous power and thrumming potential of 2004 debut Fluxion and Metal Blade debut Aeolian, described as “complex, overwhelming and mercilessly tight” (Kerrang!), through to 2007 double concept album Precambrian, a “Teutonic paean to Earth’s geology” (Revolver) and the two-headed atheist's manifesto of Heliocentric and
Anthropocentric (both 2010), Staps and a perennially fluid cast of musical characters have methodically built a unique musical legacy.
2013’s seminal album Pelagial, described as “A filmic ode to shifting moods, dichotomous influences and the musical personification of sinking towards the planet’s deepest underwater points” by Rock Sound, was another milestone for the band. Their most conceptual work to date, the album was ranked #3 on
LoudWire’s “Best Metal Albums Of 2013”, #5 in About.com’s “2013 Best Heavy Metal Albums” and recently appeared in LoudWire’s “The Best 66 Metal Albums Of The Decade” list.
In November 2018, The Ocean released their most ambitious, overarching and engrossing endeavour to date: Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic – the first half of a sprawling but superbly cohesive palaeontology concept album. The Phanerozoic eon is the current chapter in Earth’s history; a chapter which began 541 million years ago, after the end of the Precambrian. The present tense is the Phanerozoic – we are living in it.
During these 541 million years, the evolution and diversification of plant and animal life on Earth occurred, and the destruction of it in five mass extinction events.
Widely hailed as their finest work to date, Phanerozoic I brimmed with moments of wide-eyed compositional brilliance, alongside the expected warping and weaving of post-metal conventions. It entered the official
German album charts at #41 and became album of the month in Aardschok magazine, #3 in Visions and Metal Hammer (Germany) and album of the year in the Metal Hammer Reader's charts.
In September of 2020, The Ocean released the eagerly-awaited concluding episode of the Phanerozoic journey, Phanerozoic II. Completing the album took longer than expected, because of the band’s heavy touring schedule since the release of Phanerozoic I: impressions of these adventures through India, Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Georgia, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are documented in the 130-page Phanerozoic photo-book that was released along with Part II. In contrast with the compositional directness of Phanerozoic I, Phanerozoic II is a vastly more progressive and perverse piece of work.
“Phanerozoic II is more experimental, more eclectic in musical style and direction, and more varied in terms of tempos, beats, guitar work and the use of electronics,” notes Staps. “The outcome is a record that is a real journey. It starts in one place, and concludes in a totally different place. In a way, it relates to Pelagial, which was similar in that it was also a journey: but a more guided, focused and predictable one.
Phanerozoic II on the other hand is closer to the experience of free fall.”
Divided into two sections – Mesozoic and Cenozoic – Phanerozoic II once again showcases the detail and depth that have become two of The Ocean’s most enduring trademarks. While ostensibly delving into the extraordinary realities of the Earth’s shifting temporal tides, Staps and his comrades have long drawn hazy parallels between their chosen subjects and the emotional experiences that their music strives to convey.
Phanerozoic II is essentially an album about time, with some very poignant and pointed allusions to the modern world woven into the new music’s spiritual fabric.
At the end of the Mesozoic era, an asteroid hit the Yucatán peninsula in what is nowadays Mexico and wiped out not only the dinosaurs, but most life on earth. The impact triggered forest fires of unfathomable dimensions, and the dust from the impact and the smoke from the fires clouded the sun for months.
Photosynthesis eventually came to a halt on a global level, the oxygen level in the atmosphere plummeted, temperatures dropped. This historic apocalypse is the essence of the track Jurassic | Cretaceous, which The Ocean take to the human level by references to maverick movie director Lars Von Trier's masterpiece Melancholia and the various philosophical questions touched upon in that film. The current climate change debate, which was alluded to in Permian: The Great Dying on Phanerozoic I, recurs in the chorus hook-line of Cretaceous: ‘We are just like reptiles, giant rulers of the world. Within the blink of an eye wiped off the face of the Earth’.”
“Though humanity is only a very recent phenomenon in the 541 million years history of the Phanerozoic eon, the lyrics are obviously written from a human perspective”, Staps explains. “They are following Nietzsche's philosophical idea of amor fati in the light of the larger themes of Eternal Recurrence, and the inevitability of an imaginary impending collision on a planetary scale, which are the two red threads that go through Phanerozoic I and II.”
A profound cautionary tale, Phanerozoic II is underpinned by some of the most imaginative and challenging music that The Ocean – completed by drummer Paul Seidel, keyboard player Peter Voigtmann, bassist Mattias Hägerstrand, guitarist David Ramis Ahfeldt and vocalist Loïc Rossetti - have made yet. Tracked in Iceland, Spain and Germany and produced by esteemed studio guru Jens Bogren, the album is once again blessed with the presence of Jonas Renkse of Katatonia, whose peerless vocals find another sublime backdrop during the second half of mammoth epic Jurassic / Cretaceous. Also making a return appearance on the new record is Tomas Liljedahl, best known as vocalist with iconic Swedish act Breach. With cameos o n Aeolian, Precambrian and Pelagial, Liljedahl has already proved his kinship and chemistry with The Ocean.
The German 6-piece have long been known for their extensive, awe-inspiring album packaging, and their 10th album is no let-down: the Phanerozoic wooden box set included an engraved slate rock plate next to vinyl records and/or CDs of both albums, and even authentic pre-historic fossils: a trilobite from the Palaeozoic, an ammonite from the Mesozoic and a petrified fish skeleton from the Cenozoic era. The band sourced these fossils over the period of several months with the help of a geological institute in Munich, and getting the quantities needed to fulfil 1,000 box set preorders was a great challenge: hundreds of Moroccan trilobites, 450 million (!) years of age, had to be sourced from global trade fairs.
The Ocean have always been professional escape artists from the modern world, playing in a many farflung locations as possible, and Staps insists that The Ocean will roll on for the foreseeable future, as mighty and inexorable as time itself. “We're always striving to get out as much as we can,” Staps concludes.
“And as far away as we can, to take our music out to the last frontiers which remain in a world where nearly every square inch of every remaining free space has been google-mapped out to a frightening high resolution and level of detail.”