OCEAN
FOGDIVER - CD

Originally released in 2003, THE OCEAN’s first instrumental studio album “Fogdiver” still sounds fresh and at times surprisingly close to the sound of the band’s later albums. With the original vinyl and CD release long out of print, it was time for a reissue: with a new, contemporary version of the original art-work, printed in silver ink on all black cardboard.

Coming together around a vision of limitless sonic exploration and unrelenting heaviness, the Berlin-based post-metal collective gained a formidable reputation within the post rock, post metal, progressive metal & hardcore scenes. Being revered as one of the most devastating live bands in contemporary heavy music, The Ocean became a regular fixture on the European festival circuit appearing on metal festivals like Hellfest, Wacken and Resurrection as well as mainstream rock open airs like Roskilde, Dour, Pukkelpop or Oya and tastemakers’ indoor boutique festivals like Roadburn and Dunk!. Over the course of their storied career, the band have toured Europe and North America with artists such as Opeth, Mastodon, Mono, Cult of Luna, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Katatonia, Anathema and Devin Townsend.

The Ocean were known to be a collective in their early days, a loose group of people coming together to rehearse and eventually perform live, with a revolving door policy and ever-changing faces on stage. However to assume that the creative process was equally collective would be wrong: „Fogdiver“ was written, recorded and mixed by Staps, the creative director of the group, and essentially The Ocean was his brainchild.

‘Fogdiver’ was released in 2003 by German label Make My Day Records, long before Staps started his own record label Pelagic Records in 2009. It was a milestone for The Ocean in many ways – acclaimed by the press, it opened doors to European touring, festival gigs and an incredibly supportive international fanbase.

The booklet contains a lengthy and youthfully naive, manifesto-type of running text written by Staps during his trips through South East Asia and Bolivia, connecting the individual tracks into one continuous oeuvre and giving the instrumental tracks scope and meaning, inspired by the Dadaist, Situationist and Surrealist movements; by Schwitters, Debord, Breton, CrimethINC and Refused’s album „The Shape of Punk To Come“.

It is The Ocean Collective’s first proper studio album, self-recorded at Oceanland, an old aluminum factory in a basement in Berlin-Kreuzberg, where panels and doors for submarines were manufactured during world war II. The collective rehearsed and recorded all their early albums here, and some members lived in the catacombs for extensive periods of time. It was a no-brainer to honour the importance of this creative space for the band’s history by keeping the rough yet powerful sound of the original recordings.

22 years have passed since, and yet the „Fogdiver“ songs are holding up well to this day. This may be due to the fact that most of the songs on „Fogdiver“ were newer at the time than most of the tracks that ended up on the later albums „Fluxion“ and „Aeolian“, which were released in 2004 and 2006 respectively.

„The chronology of our early albums is misleading“, comments Staps. „When I decided to do an instrumental debut album, I wrote all brand new tracks for it, although I had already written most of the material for the consecutive „Fluxion“ and „Aeolian“ albums – but this material didn’t work without vocals, so I decided to hold it back and release our newest material first“.

‘Airily melodic passages alongside the requisite end-of-the-world-is-nigh bludgeon. ‘Fogdiver’ is an eminently listenable piece of work, with skilful attention to mood comparable to soundtrack music.’ – Kerrang!, KKKK

‘brimming with ingenuity, passion and a driving sense of urgency. As invigorating as a breath of fresh sea air, this is a treasure that’s begging to b discovered.’ – Rock Sound