I also often wonder if perhaps people are telling the same stories I am, wherein you’re describing this ambitious and explosive song barreling through guitar part and riff after riff as if they were being given away, a wall of drums behind them, and ear-burning vocals lofted above… only to then get completely sideswiped by some out-of-left-field electronics that barge their way into the song as if every story finds its ending at “and then the keyboards began.”
…And Oceans are stubbornly and wilfully unconventional, burning as many musical bridges as they have built, and just as easily turning to dust every bit of conventional good will they might have bought.
Metal as a whole lends itself so well to reactionary contrarianism, and …And Oceans seem as if they’re reacting against their own blackened take on the genre itself at times. Three full-length albums into their comeback and they remain as off-kilter as you could imagine. It’s become their trademark to just smash stuff together like atoms triggering fission. It doesn’t matter whether or not it “works”, …And Oceans are going to do it, and it’s just as often as abrasive as if they had chosen to go the high-frequency, high-tuned, high-shrieking guitar and vocals route. When you have extremity that has long since been canonized and normalized into a format, why not make things as strange as possible?
By this point in their career it seems like …And Oceans live for the “weird” and want to see just how much they can get away with while still making music ferocious enough to feel like you’re having your face dragged along concrete at high speed – which brings us to the group’s new album The Regeneration Itinerary, an intriguing piece of work that is just as interested in clawing hard against the walls of its own boundaries as it is electrifying the waters before it.
Every album of …And Oceans‘ career has felt like the band challenging people to meet them on their terms. They’ve changed their name as their sound leaned heavier into the electronics side of things, switched back, and even reincarnated with new band members. They have had a wild career and their constant throwing down of the gauntlet has continued unabated since Cosmic World Mother saw release.
Just when you think you have a grasp on where the band might be headed – outside of their core sound of blastbeat driven music with roaring vocals – it seems as if …And Oceans pick up the goalposts and move them further away as they discover some new and strange concept to latch on to. They are forever in a Charlie Brown kicking the football act with …And Oceans in the role of Lucy; we’ve rapidly achieved a point musically wherein it would feel like an act of sorcery to accurately predict what …And Oceans are going to throw at us for an electronics break in the midst of one of their regular songs. This is especially the case with The Regeneration Itinerary in which some of their attempts to fuse together by brute force two disparate styles of music results in some of the most jarring and unexpected breaks within their already intricate music yet.
The Regeneration Itinerary consists of 10 songs – or 12 if you’ve grabbed the deluxe edition – of wildly adventurous black metal. Much as we pontificate above about the lunatic way in which the group insert their keyboard and synthesizer breaks within songs, …And Oceans are still propelled forward by a fiery melding of classic – sometimes erring on too classic – and explosive black metal riff work. They alternate between lit chariots on fire careening through a crowd and a Khold-esque grooving sway for most of the material on The Regeneration Itinerary. …And Oceans have their grandiose ambitions still on display as well; the many songs within sound much larger than just a grouping of six dudes would suggest.
You do need some time in order to ram all of those opposing forces together as well, so much like Cosmic World Mother and As In Gardens, So In Tombs before it, The Regeneration Itinerary sails well over the45-minute mark – and tack on another 10 for the bonus two songs on the deluxe edition. If ever there was an album built for multiple listens just to digest and discover different things within it, The Regeneration Itinerary is of that class.
Even though we’re focused hard on just how much …And Oceans are constructing their music by force of rebar and cement, this is still fairly intricate music. When you glance through the run times and see songs leaping past the five-minute mark like Olympic high jumpers, those are ones that are equal parts eccentricity and intensity. There’re a handful of three-minute blast-fired creations in this mix – “The Form and the Formless” and “The Fire in Which We Burn” among them – but most will be asking more time if you’re willing to watch them raze a city to the ground.
Funny then, that “The Form And The Formless” is especially going to catch people off-guard as the synth work comes barreling in from the other room as if Sweden’s Machinae Supremacy were in the studio next door and accidentally fell through the wall. The sudden shift from big, swollen keyboards like tidal waves crashing into beachside to the electronic get-down by way of alternate universe Commodore is just brazen enough that all you can really do is give it the “yeah sure, why the hell not?” treatment. This is just what …And Oceans do, and four songs into The Regeneration Itinerary, you’re basically along for the ride.
It’s not too dissimilar from the goth-club rave that rips into the midpoint of “Intertiae” to start the whole album off. You’re traversing frosted cliffside and flaming waste and then all of a sudden its the late-’90s and Psygnosis is alive again, releasing new renderings of upcoming Feisar ships that you’ll be using in the next Wipeout game.
For every one of those songs that feel like you’ve been yanked out of a moving car so …And Oceans can just be weird, there’s an equally relentless track lying in wait. “Chromium Lungs, Bronze Optics” kicks things off with a violent drum intro and never ever lets up from there – if you’d felt that “Förnyelse i Tre Akter” was somehow dragging it’s feet, “Chromium Lungs…” decides to stay just as fast. It’s a two-song block dedicated to turning drummer Kauko Kuusisalo into a human battering ram.
They even cycle back around to the extended drum intro in “The Ways Of Sulphur” seven songs in, as if …And Oceans are laying multiple “two sides of the same coin” songs within its own tracklisting. The difference between the two is the more pronounced and bouncing synth work within “The Ways Of Sulphur”, because again, one does not earn the avant-garde tag by being “normal” in any sense. If one must sway and swing back and forth on the guitar while the keyboards break out rubbery tones then so it shall be. These are the orders and thus …And Oceans will march to them. Bearing in mind, this is still while the band have lit half the song on fire otherwise. The Regeneration Itinerary skates by just as much on intensity and spectacle as it does tightly-wound song craft. Three albums into this comeback and the …And Oceans team are offering up multiple fights for its listeners to brawl their way through.
If you’re able to get your grubby mitts on them, the two bonus songs on the limited editions of The Regeneration Itinerary are worth your time as well. “Copper Blood, Titanium Scars” may not be as openly violent as its elemental descriptor siblings on the main affair, but four minutes of grooving verse and hefty double-bass roll are still welcome. What a strange experience that one of the few times you really get to headbang along to a song on the album – easily, anyway – comes in the bonus tracks. Perhaps since the song isn’t as monstrously overwhelming as most of the main run explains why it found itself added along for the true sick ones among us who must have everything. The song even has one of vocalist Mathias Lillmåns‘ wildest death growls within it.
“The Discord Static”, we kid you not here, opens with a breakbeat and has enough electronics layered into its opening segment that “Dead On The Dancefloor”-era Dååth would be jealous. There’s enough apocalyptic chaos forced into the rest of the song that you almost forget what the introduction was like until it surfaces again about a minute later. “The Discord Static” oscillates back and forth between the two for three and a half minutes and may just be worth it for most listeners for the black-metal circus act atmospherics of it.
…And Oceans have unleashed another gargantuan avante-garde piece of black metal upon us. Their taste for the eclectic, electric, and strange is more than enough to keep things dynamic when their core sound of constant jet engine threatens to become a gentle-hum to which we could rock a baby to sleep. …And Oceans know how to keep a listener transfixed when they’re placing song upon song on the altar to the obscene and weird. Coupled with tightly wound word play and spiritual faux-losophy, …And Oceans have turned the The Regeneration Itinerary into a ravenous monster all its own.
When you’re seeking the overwhelming atmospherics and discolored smoke that only so many bands can offer, …And Oceans will have you covered. If you like watching a group essentially rivet songs together whether or not it actually works organically, …And Oceans have you covered. There’s no such thing as a misstep when you’ve already veered wildly off the musical tight rope by the mid-point of your first song. Instead, …And Oceans‘ new album continues their streak of massive black metal releases that are so beyond “just regular bizarre” that they’re nearly charming.
Watching them amble about is half the fun and the other part of the fun lies in whatever skin you have to scrape off the wall behind you when the sheer force of “loud” that the band get up to on The Regeneration Itinerary sheers it off to just a skeleton. About as jagged and strange as they could ever get, …And Oceans have created a hellish journey on The Regeneration Itinerary.
https://orcd.co/andoceanstheregenerationitinerary
https://andoceans.bandcamp.com/album/the-regeneration-itinerary
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