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THE OCEAN: Rising Above The Modern Deluge With ROBIN STAPS · HEAVY Music Interviews

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Robin from the Berlin-based heavy metal band
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Ocean. Good morning. Good evening. Hello there. How are
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: you today, good sir? I'm very good. Just crawled out
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: of bed and having my first coffee of the day. Nice.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: You need them that time of day. So we're here
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: today to speak about the fact that The Ocean are
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: releasing a 12-studio album, Solaris, on September the 25th. So
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: how are you feeling, mate?
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: It's not far away. Yeah, excited. It's been long in
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the making and... It's always so relieving when you release
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: a record that you've been working on in the dark
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for months and sometimes years. And then finally it sees
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: the light of day. It's just like one of the
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: best things in music is that moment, you know, so
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: we're all gearing up for it. We have a kind
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of an unofficial record release show on the release day
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: in Barcelona. It'd be Prague Festival. So that's going to
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: be fun. And then we're going to start touring later
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: in the year. So just a couple of satellite shows
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: before that. But yeah, we've really just been working on
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the record for the last year and a half pretty
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: much nonstop. So yeah, now's the time to let people
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: hear it. And we're fucking stoked about it. Right.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: So can you tell us a bit more about the
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: album from a musical point of view and what you're
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: going for this time around?
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So it's the first album with a new lineup, the
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: old Ocean lineup that had been the band's lineup for
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the past 10 to nearly 15 years, collapsed throughout the
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: year 2024. Everybody was burned out, tired of relentless touring
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: that we've been doing since the end of the pandemic,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: playing over 100 shows per year. And so this is
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: the first one with a new team, except for our
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: bass player, Matthias, who's still in the band, and myself. Um, and, uh,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: we've extended the lineup to, uh, two vocalists from one
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to two and from two to three guitarists. So it's
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: more people in the ocean right now than ever before.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We're not always going to play with all of them live.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: We usually tour with two guitars, but we have been
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: playing a couple of shows with three guitars, and it's
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun too. So we'll make it a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: bit flexible, and it's kind of a bit of a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: return to the collective phase of the band. We've been
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: a collective in the beginning with permanently changing members. That's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: not the goal for this chapter. Now I'm very happy
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: with this lineup as it is right now. But it
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: means that there's going to be some differences between how
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: we appear live on certain tours and during certain stages
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and phases of the band. So yeah, first record with
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: a new team. What can you expect musically? I think
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty heavy record. I think it's maybe more
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: heavy than the previous album, Holocene, which had more of
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: an electronic focus or just a stronger electronic component. Moby,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: shut up! That's my dog barking in the background. I
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: can't hear him. Okay, that's good. This album was meant
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: to be the one to come out after Phanerozoic II.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: And then Holocene, the previous album, was kind of an
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: accident that happened when our synth guy, Peter, back then
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: sent me a bunch of synth ideas and I built
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Ocean Songs over them. But that album was kind of
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: never planned. And so this is kind of like the
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: official successor to Phanerozoic II and it's connecting with that record.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's definitely... a guitar-based heavy rock album with
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: very long songs. It's 70 minutes of music in total.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: All songs are about 10 minutes. So it's only six
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: or like seven songs, basically. So it's a heavy piece
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: to take in. You need to... be ready for it
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: or not. You need to let yourself in for it.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: It's a lot to absorb, basically. So that's why also
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: we didn't want to start touring immediately, because I think
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: people need to hear this first before we actually play live.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nice. The press release says that thematically, Solaris picks
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: up where Holocene finished off. Can you elaborate on the
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: concept and the overlapping story after?
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So the last track on Holocene, Sub-Atlantic, is kind of
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: the bleak, dystopian image of an Earth that has become
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: uninhabitable and a group of human survivors leaving to find
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: a place to live somewhere else. And Solaris is the
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: story of that journey. It connects exactly there. So one
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: of the lyrics in Sub-Atlantic in that closing track of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Holocene is prepare for departure. And now Holocene picks that up,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: and the central illustration when you open the gatefold is
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a ship that is actually rising from the sea towards
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the sky. So it's a departure album. The first track
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: is titled Departure Song. And it's a story of a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: journey on a cosmic rescue boat towards Solaris, which is
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: a film made by... or making reference to a film
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: made by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972. I'm a huge fan
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: of Tarkovsky. And in that film, Solaris is an ocean
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  Speaker 1: that is an extraterrestrial source of intelligence that is manipulating
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and changing the people that come close to it, basically,
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  Speaker 1: and confronting them with childhood trauma and memories from their
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: previous lives on Earth. And at one point, they're not
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: able to tell what's real and what are... just appearances
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: without resemblance in reality. And they are confronted with all
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: these simulacra there in the station orbiting around Solaris and
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: get into very deep introspective reflections about life and philosophy, basically.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: It's a super good film. It's a very slow burn film.
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  Speaker 1: I've watched it more than probably any other film. And
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  Speaker 1: especially now in these days of short attention span, it's
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: just beautiful to have something like that, that you really
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: need to let yourself in for. And I, I mean,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in that way, it also relates to our album. I think,
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: you know, you need to have the time for it,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: make space for it and, um, and allow yourself maybe
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: to be a little bored in the beginning of the film. Uh,
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: but you will be rewarded and essentially left with a
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: lot of questions. And at least that's what that film
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: did to me. So I've always wanted to make a
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: record that leads on this film. And now Solaris is that, um,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: is that record about this journey. And, um, there is
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: a second narrative that is kind of like interwoven with
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: the Solaris narrative. And that is the narrative of, um,
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: earthy and explorers of the 15th, 16th, 17th century, um,
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  Speaker 1: that set out also to discover frontiers. And back then
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the frontier was South America or, you know, like places
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  Speaker 1: on earth that no one had been to before for
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: the cosmic explorers in space or, or, Maybe the deep
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: ocean is also a frontier that we still have today,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: but everything on Earth has been mapped out and there
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: are no real frontiers anymore. But we tell the story
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: of cosmic exploration, kind of leaning on the historic explorers
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: from Earth. So, Basco da Gama, Sir Francis Drake, Magellan,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: James Cook was the dude who went to Australia, right?
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: He was, he did. Exactly. These people that set out
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: to find uncharted territories and were driven by... different things,
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: but like they were generally like, so while working on
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: the lyrics for this album, I realized that there are
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of parallels between these historic explorers and like
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: what nowadays artists are, because they're also explorers, right? They're
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: trying to tap their feet into territories that no one
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: has been to before and trying to do something new
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and something that hasn't been done before. So there's a
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: lot of parallels between at least like this explorative mindset,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: let's call it. And if you look at the stories
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: of the Earthian explorers, it's quite interesting because a lot
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: of those stories ended with disaster, mutiny, essentially bequeathing white
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: male European values on other cultures and other people in
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: other parts of the world. And so the question that
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: came up while working on this record is like, is
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: that maybe also something that, like, can you trace that
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: back to the curiosity that is behind exploration? Because that's,
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: I guess, the starting point for everything. that's what these
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  Speaker 1: explorers shared with us as artists, artists is curiosity. It's
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: like the willingness to find something new and the strong
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  Speaker 1: drive and, and being driven to go out there against
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: the odds and find something new. And is that maybe problematic?
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  Speaker 1: Does it lead essentially to dominance and domination? Historically, if
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: you look at what these explorers did and their stories,
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  Speaker 1: there's strong indicators that the answer is yes. And, Within art,
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: we generally consider curiosity as something beautiful and innocent, something
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: we all cherish and embrace. But is that maybe just
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: the flip side? Is there a flip side of this coin?
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: So those are some questions that kind of came up
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: while working on the lyrics and this album concept. And
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: that's how it always goes. You start out with something
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: very simple and then it just goes to places. And
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  Speaker 1: that's what happened here, too. Sorry for the rant. I
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: was actually enjoying that.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: It was quite informative. When Andre was writing that movie,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: you brought it all together now, but when he wrote it,
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: you probably had no idea who you guys were. But
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: now you've managed to use his DNA and meld it
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: with yours and create another storyline out of it. Was
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: that a difficult process?
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: Writing lyrics is always a difficult process. For me, it's
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: the hardest part of making... music and making a record.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: The music itself, I'm usually pretty quick with writing. Once
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: I'm in the zone and I have everything set up
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and I have my tools and I'm not on tour,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: but at home or somewhere where I feel comfortable to write,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: it goes super fast, actually. So this record, the chorus
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: songs were probably written over the course of two weeks,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I would say, maybe maximum three. But then the lyrics,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: that took like a year, basically. It's always just so
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: many things have to fall into place and fit together,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: you know conceptually rhythmically melody harmony then rhyme and things
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: like that and sometimes you have a beautiful lyric and
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: a beautiful line but it just doesn't fit into the
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: part of the song where it needs to go and
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: then um down to the sound of certain vowels like
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: you you know maybe you do like what we usually
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: do um with um when we write vocal lines is
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: that like a lot of times the singer, whether it's
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Lane or Enrico will experiment and just come up with
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: something that sounds really nice. And it might end on
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: a certain vowel, like an O or something, but then
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: you have a cool lyric that ends on an E
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: and it doesn't work because you can't sing along E
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: end of words. It's just so many things. So it's, it's, um,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: it's always the toughest part of the process for me
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: writing lyrics for sure.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And you mentioned the explorers before, like you had
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: like Magellan, Vasco de Gamo, like people like that. But
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: how did you bridge the gap between sci-fi, psychological horror
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: and historical exploration to get to where you were going
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: with in the end?
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Like there are two things that aren't meant to be together. Yeah,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of back and forth. It's like, like
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: I said, it's two narratives that are kind of like mingled,
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: you know? And so at the end of the day,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: it's space exploration and historic exploration i think is not
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: that different when it comes to the psychological mindsets of
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: the people that are behind it and also the stories
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: itself its journeys its voyages into the unknown essentially so
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: you can think that back into the past you can
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: also think it forward into science fiction or the future
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: so i think there's a lot of parallels but um Yeah,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: so you will find elements from both in the lyrics
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: and the songs on the record. You will find direct
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: quotes from Solaris, from the film, like actual dialogue that
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: we took and kind of like integrated into the lyrics
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: of the song. And you also find references from historic
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: diaries and also the So the album will be released.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The special edition is kind of like a fabric book
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: that comes with an actual book part. And that is
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the body text of that book is a journal from
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: a Dutch explorer. His name is William Barons, who sailed
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the Barons Sea north of Russia is named after him.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: So he's out in the 16th century to basically sail
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: to the Pacific via the north. And we took that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: story and it's public domain. And so we were free
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to take that story and change it and alter it
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: and add our own elements and change names and places
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: intentionally to make it fit our own story. So that
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is like the body text of the book that comes
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: with the record, actually. And then there's quotes from Solaris
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: in the book as well that make reference to the diary.
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: So like everything is mingled into our own story. And
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: that was important because it would be too boring to
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: just take. I don't know. I wouldn't want to make.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: a soundtrack for the film, you know, that the film's already.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: So like we, I didn't want to follow exactly the
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: chronology of the film and just like make a record
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: that is exactly a soundtrack to that film. It has
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: to become our own. And that's, that's the touching points.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Like we're, you know, both of these quite different sources,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: basically finding their touching point within the context of this record.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right. I said, You mentioned that the new lineup before, mate,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: like you've brought in two brand new vocalists, Lane Sheehy
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: and Enrico Chimera. So how did you orchestrate the dual
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: vocal recording process? And then how did their individual styles
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: reshape your approach to writing the lyrics to the melodies?
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: So I met both of them in the spring of
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: last year, our spring, so like March, April, more or
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: less around the same time. And we started working on
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: vocals immediately after Hellfest, which was the last show with
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: an old lineup in June, basically. And it's been a
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: slow process. We've hardly ever been in the studio together
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: with the three of us. So I was either working
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: with Enrico or with Lane, and we were doing sessions.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: And then Enrico would react to what Lane had recorded,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: and Lane would react to what Enrico had recorded. And
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: so we of like piece the thing together um yeah
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: piece by piece brick by brick building this uh this
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: thing you know that the vocal edifice of this record
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: and um it was a very experimental process and we
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: got to know each other throughout this process uh slowly
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: and that was a really a really nice way of
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: like um approaching this basically lots of experimentation lots of
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: trial and error you know like a lot of things
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: I think that's an integral part of the creative process
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: is to allow yourself to face plant, you know, like
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: to try something and realize, okay, I spent six hours
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: on this and it leads absolutely nowhere. And that's okay.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: You know, it's part of the process. So there was
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: some of that, but, uh, generally they're both incredibly talented musicians, um,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: like vocalists and also, uh, pianists. Enrico also recorded a
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: lot of piano parts and, uh, roads and, uh, like, uh,
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: celesta and farfisa all the beautiful vintage keys that you
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: find on the record that's all enrico's work basically so
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: that was something i wasn't aware of when i met
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: him and approached him to potentially become a vocalist in
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the ocean it was really just about the vocals and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: there was something you know like i just became aware
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: of while we were recording in drums at hansa studios
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: and we found all these nice keys there we were
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: like let's use them and then enrico was like ready
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: to go basically so that was super cool as well
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And yeah, they're both very different vocalists. That's why it
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: makes sense to have two. And in terms of the
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: range and the sound, but also in terms of their
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: approach to singing, and creating, and writing parts, Lane is
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: very intuitive. And very often, it was like a one-take
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: type of thing, just in the moment, and close your eyes,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: and very emotional and intuitive. And Rico is more like a,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: like a sonic architect. Like he would always deliver like
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: eight different harmonies for the part. And then you can
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: choose the three you like, you know, so everything was
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: already laid out there basically. So it was very interesting
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: also to, um, to work with two very different vocalists
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: that are both incredibly talented and brought a lot of cool,
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: fresh ideas into this quite old record, because the original
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: songs I already wrote in 2021. And through the vocals,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: all the vocals were written last year, so the record
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: was instrumental since then. And all the vocals were written
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: last year new, and they really transformed the record and
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: took it to where it is now. And that was
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: a really nice process.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, very nice. Sorry, buddy, we're not going to have
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: to cut it short now because I've got another interview
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: to go to. But thanks very much for your time.
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: Solaris is out September 25th and it's every bit as
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: good as what you say it is, mate. So best
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: of luck with it.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Hell yeah. Thank you so much.