Articles : The Ocean Tour Diaries – Part 1

Wild Thing Presents are putting together a crazy tour across Australia, bringing the powerfully conceptual post metal band The Ocean on the road to perform their vapidly acclaimed album Pelagial in full. This vast composition explores sonically the depth measures of the sea.

Today I join the band on tour. We’re in a 20 seater bus in various states en route to the opening show at The Basement in Canberra… The Ocean consists of five eccentrically interesting men. They are tight knight as a band and yap away in German at each other. Guitarist Robin is the longest standing member and driving force behind the band, he is tall and mild mannered with glasses and beautiful tattoos of aquatic life. Singer Loic is short and compact with a remarkable energy. He struts around with this glint in his eye. A true showman. Drummer Paul is an absolute goofball, having joined the band a year ago he is constantly singing and expressing himself with strange noises, together they boil down into a strange sense of humour and more internal jokes than you could count. Bassist Chris is calm and centred, you could even say cool. Dressed in street wear he revels in his sardonic wit. On the road Paul laughs that Chris looks like a Turkish Kurt Cobain. On the topic of written journals. He remarks sarcastically about superficial things he would like to have written about him. Second guitarist Damo is a genuine Aussie, with his beard and pension for beanies he often looks like a lumberjack. The Ocean played a show in Singapore on the way over and Chris is happy that the band was well received, and talks to me behind orange tinted sunglasses. In Singapore there was no alcohol sold at the show. “It was really weird,” says Chris, “our first ‘straight edge’ show”. I smile. “Surely you still got pissed though?”

“Oh yeah we did!” We both laugh and the bassist explains they then moved on to New Zealand to play a massive show in support of Mastodon. Alongside Beastwars this is a highly regarded show by the band.

Dave Couper attempting to sneak a snooze in the green room. (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

Every jovial the guys were laughing about loudly making people uncomfortable on the plane. “Yeah” laughs Chris “You just get your buddy to sit about 20 rows below you”. Robin raises his eyeborws, as if to say he would be that buddy.

“Then you yell out to him and say hey, can you pass me my haemorrhoid pillow?!”

Chris and Robin laugh at the expense of airline employees. Paul looks up from his Macbook where he has been heavily enveloped.

“Or you just ask the airhostess if she has a haemorrhoid pillow.”

All jokes aside the band are stoked to be bringing their live show around Australia. Especially the Factory Floor in Sydney tonight. The show has seen great ticket sales and The Ocean will be filming the performance to appear on Mosh Cam. If the footage is good enough Robin suggests that fans may see it appear on a Pelagial live DVD that has been in development for an extended period of time. The Ocean have already collected a quality archive such as two shows in Hungary and huge summer festivals, like for instance, Wacken Open Air festival.

Loic enjoys a chat with guitarist Damo’s dad. (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

At the time of writing it’s 4:20pm and we are about an hour away from the venue in Canberra, trundling through some ridiculous traffic situation forcing highway traffic into one lane. We’re about an hour and a half away from The Basement, our venue in Canberra. Here we’ll be meeting with Caligula’s Horse – the national support for every leg of the tour excluding Perth where The Ocean will be joined by Chaos Divine.

We all can’t fucking wait to get to Canberra at this point. Amidst openly discussing shitty promoters Robin and Chris break into extensive conversing in industrial toned German. My ears prick when I hear the English words “Intronaut” “Explosions in the Sky” and “Tour”. Before you get excited the context was totally unrelated. We finally arrive to The Basement in Canberra and our twelve strong touring party piles into the venue. Everyone helps out to set up and there is a community vibe. We are all happy to see Caligula’s Horse who are waiting to meet us. After a quick set up we hit the bar.

Traditionally Dave warms up on bass for a full hour before going on stage with Caligula’s Horse. Dave plays a monstrous 6 string Fame, and he works it to death before he has even plugged in. He and Chris chat as they are both the bass players. The Oceans twang slanger rocks a Gibson Rd. “It’s 8kg” he says casually. “So you can kill someone with it if you want to.”

Bass players hitting it off. Dave and Chris meet for the first time backstage (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

I take off for dinner with The Ocean.We dined like kings at Wonder Meals next door, an inadvertently awesome and authentic Chinese restaurant. With bowls of tofu soup and platters of fried eggplant, noodles and rice adjourned out table, busting it to the perimeter. We devoured the food hungrily. Slurping up noodles and grinning.

The food here was a highlight for The Ocean. Most of them took home some leftovers.

Sam and Zac actually communicate via the guitar. (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

Onstage Caligula’s Horse are entropic. The physical outlines of their bodies are awash in dark green and purple lighting, giving a futuristic sheen to their onstage presence as the band spews heavily unique grooves unrelentingly, intertwined with middle eastern scales that pull you straight back to Persia in the 5^th Century B.C. Their seven song set boasted their abilities as a band and orchestrates how great a suit they are to be supporting Opeth next month. Expect to have your face blown up by The City Has No Empathy, Dark Hair Down and new song Rust. This track was debuted when the aptly nicknamed C-Horse supported Mastodon in Brisbane not long ago. They will be breaking it in on the rest of the tour.

Loic in his natural habitat. (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

The Ocean transformed The Basement. The band has an impeccable control of atmosphere and are able to inject weight, or weightlessness, into any particular moment. The use of dynamic lighting casts the band into dark silhouettes when these heavy riffs bear down upon your soul. The progression of Pelagial, especially when performed, can cast one into a trance like state. Naturally the crowd was absolutely absorbed in the journey. Loic dives into the crowd at a penultimate moment of heightened energy surfing on top of the crowd.

An encapsulated Canberra crowd. (Photo by Mark Hoffmann)

Our touring party is on the way to Sydney. See you at The Factory Floor!

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