Oceano — Ascendants
As I wrote in my Attila review, deliberate hate-mongering is not generally a feature of this blog. No matter how much scorn might be heaped upon an album, I always try to approach releases with an open mind.
That said, listening to the snoozefest that is Oceano’s Ascendants seriously challenged that objective, as nearly every criticism I had heard of this Chicago deathcore outfit became manifestly and painfully obvious during the very opening moments of the record. The intro track, Nephilim, opens with some spooky-sounding, delay-and-chorus-drenched guitars that are abruptly swept aside by blast beats and death metal riffage. Those riffs, in turn, are abruptly swept aside by some half-time chuggery and vocalist Adam Warren’s guttural pig squeals.
Then the song ends.
Why did it end? Why was it there? Why did those things happen? Does it still count as a breakdown if the entire song is a breakdown?
Before you have time to consider the answers to these questions, the rest of the album happens. It’s about 40 minutes long or so. Every song is indistinguishable from the next, save for the admittedly groovy djent segment on Transient Gateways and the mildly interesting melodic interplay between the synths and chugs on Dawn of Descent. Nearly every single song features:
- 8th note suffo-blasts with the guitars playing descending quarter notes on top and Warren growling in time to the beat
- Some half-assed synth melody in the background that noodles around without leading anywhere
- A verse that’s basically a breakdown followed by a chorus that’s basically a breakdown followed by a bridge that’s basically a breakdown followed by an outro that’s basically a breakdown
- Adam Warren being physically unable to stop growling for longer than a single 4/4 bar
If you really want to dissect the basic problem with Oceano, it’s that the band’s guitarists don’t actually write riffs; they write rhythmic ideas. All the song segments here are basically built around those ideas, with virtually no consideration for melody whatsoever. Things simply repeat for no reason, modified slightly by the incessant usage of glitch editing and alternating drum patterns (the band doesn’t have a real drummer, btw) to make things sound marginally fresh enough to last for two or three minutes. And none of it is catchy, fun, interesting, or even really all that brutal when compared to the band’s peers.
Good death metal, or deathcore, or whatever you want to call it, has soul. It has purpose. Though their last couple of LPs have gone downhill, The Acacia Strain basically perfected the style Oceano is shooting for here on 2008's Continent and 2010's Wormwood. These are filthy, breakdown-infested monstrosities with songs about destroying the world and the Unabomber. But here’s the thing: Vincent Bennett knows how to write good lyrics. Ex-guitarist Daniel Laskiewicz knows how to write a catchy riff. Kevin Boutot knows how to accent his drum patterns so they emphasize certain notes that the guitars are playing. It’s every bit as menacing and single-minded as Oceano is trying to be, but it’s actually pretty thoughtful music on a technical and conceptual level. The love, enthusiasm, and effort that the musicians have put into the music shine through. The same can be said for All Shall Perish, Despised Icon, Fit For an Autopsy, and even Thy Art is Murder. There’s certainly a patina of slick production and scenester-ism about it in some cases, but those aren’t the dominant features of the music, by and large.
That is not the case for Oceano. There is no sense of fun, no attempt to write catchy hooks, and not even a passing glance at having some sort of artistic concept behind it all. It’s just a hyper-compressed mix job designed to sound heavy with some dude churning out pig squeals over guitar riffs that are heinously unmemorable. Any decent guitarist could write half an album’s worth of the material on Ascendants if given a comfy chair and a metronome. This isn’t just shitty metal; it’s depressing. 3/10.
Ascendants is out now. Stream it on Spotify and buy it here.
