Album Review: ...And Oceans - The Regeneration Itinerary
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
...And Oceans first piqued my fancy with their “Cosmic World Mother” album back in 2020. They’re not a new band exactly, having got their start back in the 90’s, but, well, there is after all no time like the present. I found that particular release sublimely enjoyable, especially considering I was making an effort to get more into black metal at the time - I suppose it felt, in a few ways, as though it was the right album at the right time. I checked out the follow up maybe once – I remember feeling positively about it though for one reason or another, lost to time either way, it was not an album with which I spent much time. I’ve heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder; seeing …And Oceans on the promo list…it kindled something perhaps, the newborn glow of hope that the flame might be reignited anew. But who knows – it wouldn’t be the first axiom to fail. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” didn’t survive as a truism past the first parachute malfunction. So, trepidatiously I ask myself: are …And Oceans worthy of the fond memories?
Yes. And no. But mostly yes. Lets see the offending thorn flicked free forthwith so that I can gush unencumbered. Some of the attempts to marry black metal and EDM do not work. Conceptually an album that sounds like I’ve taken Fenriz to Ibiza need not be a fraught one assuming the respective merits of metal and dance music are spliced sensibly, and this album does have instances of that very thing. At other times though, the attempt is about as clean and seamless as soldering gerbils together. “The Form and the Formless” builds and morphs throughout, but then at 1.40 the molly kicks in and I’m running from the police while trying to score ketamine from homeless people, frantically chucking cigarettes at them while trying to howl over the sirens that techno will never die, with a heart BPM looking like a phone number. “Inertiae” has similar pitfalls – less a problem of the individual sounds of metal and dance in and of themselves, but more in the abrupt, jarring transitions between the two that feel somewhat as if two wholly different songs were slapped together without the ingenuity that I know this band to be capable of.
And with that, we must consign the negativity to the farther reaches of our minds, for the remaining bulk of The Regeneration Itinerary is utterly excellent. But I’d like to discuss that slightly oddly, if you’ll bear with me – I am going somewhere with this. There’s an action – more properly a capacious set of actions - called “stimming”. Repetitive motions that some people make that can take any number of forms, from hand flapping, bouncing on tip toes, swaying from side to side, all the way to things like verbal stimming (humming or talking to oneself for example). It’s something fairly common within the neurodivergent of us, particularly but not limited to autistic or ADHD individuals. For me it’s communicative in a sense, and the way I’m moving at any given moment says a lot in and of itself about how I’m feeling. I don’t always know I’m doing it, and while I can suppress it, it doesn’t feel comfortable or remotely natural to do so. So, the preamble for the most part complete, the query I’m trying to pose in far too many words is this: how does this album make me move?
Expand; breathe. Fingertips flow held at arms length at “ Förnyelse i Tre Akter”, tremolo lead lines painting nebulae in the womb of the universe, bright synths as flaring nova, lanterns in the black. I stretch and arch; I can feel it, the beauty of it, the serenity within it, flowing like a cosmic wave, screams echoing out into an atmosphere they build themselves as they move through the starlit vacuum. It feels enveloping, pristine yet cold, Immaculate yet harbour to horrors; at 3.25 I crunch into myself, fingers clawed and rigid, spine contouring into a shapeless twist, chin ground into the top on my chest as though clawing a burrow; the riff is savage, the growl feral, the blast beats herald to a trespassed event horizon. Atoms rend, plucked from their kin to stream forth to that aphotic core from which even light itself cannot fly. I can feel it, the fury of it, the splendour in its power, the blinding glory of a hostile purity.
There is “I am Coin, I am Two”. And there is what passes for my dance to it. There is also any number of ways to scribble that chorus riff, yet tablature and standard notation be damned – i’ll cast my lot with onomatopoeia. Dun-dun daaaah naaah, dun-dun dahnahnaaaaah NAAAAH NAAAAH. I swim with it; its ebb and flow, swells and retreats. My torso makes a chicane of it between paddling arms sweeping handfuls of swollen tide to aft. The ocean has a heartbeat, miles-deep resting vaults it’s ventricles, chasms its veins. At origin I float unto Charybdis’ maw, placid yet powerless; she waits to make sport of any seafarer fool enough to conflate patience with indolence. I’m adrift, in a way. Arcing into a triumphal midsection, limbs spread like wings. Free of the whirlpool, feather light...but it’s that chorus, the ironclad thunder of it, perfectly situated between faster or more melodic sections, unfaltering in how gratifying it is. However oppressive the song becomes, or by turn ethereal and diaphanous, that chorus is there like ballast, ever faithful, holding the track together like a spine.
The true crown jewel of the album, though, is “The Terminal Filter”. Those synths, those aching synths. I’m weightless now, swaying, swaying. My arms trace orbits around blast beat flurries punctuating oblivion with starlight. I am slowed, graceless but unconcerned for it, clasping hands pulling and clenching in long drawn swoops like a puppeteer. It feels good, so very good. A melody as morose as it is beautiful stakes the song in place, a beacon casting sanctified illumination out into the void. I can almost inhale it, as it takes flight in the latter half of the song - for all it’s speed I look within it and find comfort, resolution, a sense of belonging. I’m up on my toes now; reaching out into the ether with splaying fingers, cruciform, as though the song itself bears me aloft. It’s hard to describe how I feel sometimes. I’m told that a lot of people have an internal monologue, but I don’t. It’s more a case of amorphous sensations that would be easier to describe in colours. The metal may be black, but listening to this song, the sensation is...white. less the frosted whiteness of snow, more the subtle, yellowed whiteness of sunlight on a perfect day. It feels healing, familiar, comforting. That’s probably a strange way to describe a black metal song, but as plaintive, delicate piano keys step their way towards the end, I find myself stilled, calmed. Brighter inside. Able to breathe. And I think there’s a magic to that. To instilling that peace, that warm silence within.
I wonder if the reason metal means as much to me as it does is because it’s such a tactile experience for me. There are moments here that soar, moments that I can connect with to a literally physical level. There are also moments in which that wholesome link is cruelly snipped. Praise be, then, that the former outnumbers the latter so comprehensively. This whole review might well be insufferably pretentious, but if it comes across that way, I hope it’s at least clear that it wasn’t meant to. I think that what I’m trying to get across is less an accounting of the album so much as an interpretation of it, what it provokes in me as opposed to what it consists of, if that makes any sense at all. At its most basic, i’m not attempting to tell you what the album is. I’m attempting to tell you how it made me feel.
I hope that you can feel it too.
Be the first to comment