Artist

The Ocean

Berlin, Germany • Formed 2000

The Ocean is a music group from Berlin, Germany, active since 2000. Their discography on Gatefold includes 14 records.

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Albums tracked

In collections

2000

Since

Biography

The Ocean (a.k.a. The Ocean Collective) is a progressive metal band started in 2001 in Berlin, Germany by guitarist Robin Staps. However, the first stable line-up was formed only in 2009 during recording sessions of Heliocentric and Anthropocentric. As for 2013, 4 of 5 band members are from Switzerland, while its founder continues to live in Berlin. In addition, Chris Breuer, a touring bass player who also made a recording appearance on Pelagial, is a citizen of Berlin too.

The Arc of The Ocean

The pivots — what forced The Ocean to reinvent.

The Basement Collective Era
Between Fogdiver and Aeolian, Robin Staps ran the project as a chaotic, open-source orchestral sludge collective with over forty different contributors passing through the studio. They tracked Aeolian using cheap gear in a damp Berlin basement, capturing a raw, metallic hardcore aggression that nearly broke the band before they even started. The sound here is completely different from their later work, characterized by multiple vocalists screaming over each other, abrasive guitars, and a total lack of the cinematic polish that defines their mid-career output.
The Rossetti Pivot
By 2009, Staps was exhausted by the unstable lineup and recruited vocalist Lo$c Rossetti for the dual Heliocentric and Anthropocentric sessions. Rossetti's ability to transition from clean, soaring melodies to throat-shredding screams allowed the band to abandon the wall-to-wall sludge for intricate, progressive songwriting. You can hear this immediate shift on tracks like 'Firmament,' where the band uses space and piano-led quiet sections to build tension rather than just blasting the listener with noise.
The Conceptual Deep Dive
For the recording of Pelagial, the band originally tracked the entire album as an instrumental concept piece meant to mimic a dive into the deep ocean. Rossetti fell seriously ill during the writing phase, forcing the band to mix the instrumental version first before tracking vocals at the absolute last minute once he recovered. This near-disaster forced a brilliant dynamic shift, resulting in a claustrophobic, down-tuned record that gets progressively heavier and slower with every single track.

Influences

Neurosis — Robin Staps has repeatedly cited Souls at Zero and Enemy of the Sun as the primary blueprints for combining heavy, down-tuned metal with tribal percussion and visual projections. You hear this heavy atmospheric sludge influence directly in the dense guitar layering of Precambrian. They took the Neurosis wall-of-sound and applied it to geological history.
Breach — The Swedish post-hardcore band's landmark album It's Me God is a massive reference point for early Ocean records like Fluxion. The jagged, dissonant guitar riffs and desperate, throat-shredding vocal delivery on 'Queen of the Food-Chain' are a direct nod to the Swedish school of heavy music. Breach showed them how to be heavy without relying on standard death metal tropes.
Meshuggah — The band has toured with Meshuggah and Staps has noted their complex rhythmic structures as a major influence on the band's rhythm section. You can hear the complex, polyrhythmic chugging of Fredrik Thordendal's style all over the heavier tracks on Anthropocentric. It is the math-metal foundation under the orchestral arrangements.
Mogwai — The Ocean's softer, ambient movements are rooted in late-90s Scottish post-rock, a connection cemented when they later collaborated with Mono. The long, slow-burning instrumental builds on Fogdiver rely entirely on the quiet-loud-quiet dynamics that Mogwai popularized. It's the art of letting a song breathe before hitting the distortion pedal.
Arvo P$rt — Staps's classical training and appreciation for holy minimalism shine through the band's brass and string arrangements. The brass-heavy intro to 'The Origin of Species' borrows its bleak, repeating horn lines directly from P$rt's classical compositions. It adds a cold, European cinematic weight that standard metal bands can't replicate.