By Andrew Bansal
German progressive metal band The Ocean recently put out ‘Pelagial’, the best album of their career and one of the finest, most creative albums to have been released in 2013 so far. Currently, they are on the Summer Slaughter tour opening for the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals As Leaders, Periphery and others, in an attempt to do justice to these fantastic Pelagial tunes in the live setting. The second show of the tour was at the House Of Blues Sunset Strip on Saturday July 20th, and a little while after the conclusion of their set, I had a chance to have a drink and a conversation with guitarist and principal songwriter Robin Staps to discuss the logistics of this tour, the fun exchange they’re doing with fans, the two versions of the album vocal and instrumental, and lots more. Read the in-depth but entertaining conversation below and make sure you catch their set at Summer Slaughter.
It’s always good talking to you, Robin. How are you doing today?
Pretty good, man. Hanging out in the parking lot after our set, drinking booze! We got a lot of booze from people who followed our facebook call, so it’s a good second day of the tour (laughs).
I was going to ask you about that but since you already brought it up, let’s get into it. You made a facebook post asking people to bring you booze in exchange for guest list spots and free merch! Who came up with that idea? That’s just genius. You get free booze and the money you’re paid by the tour can be used for other things.
Exactly! I just came up with it the other day because we’re only getting a limited catering budget on this tour which all goes into feeding our hungry stomachs. We don’t really want to spend 60 bucks on two bottles of booze every night. So we just started trading merch for booze, because a shirt costs us about 4 or 5 dollars when we print them but we are selling them for 20. That’s the only way a band makes actual money on tour, by selling merchandise. But to give two shirts away doesn’t really cost us that much, and then if that gets us some booze it’s definitely a good thing. A lot of people followed the call. Since yesterday we’ve had like 200 messages from people saying they’ll come to this and that show and asked us what they would bring. So we’ve been coordinating everything with these fans and now we’re all set up for pretty much every city of the tour! It’s great. People really seem to like the chance to get to hang out with us before the show.
That’s awesome! But coming to the music, it was an interesting set. You started out with an old song and played some part of the new album ‘Pelagial’. Obviously you don’t have enough time on this tour to play the whole album, so you’re choosing to do a mix of old and new instead.
Yeah, it’s a very difficult scenario for us to play a 25-minute set. It does not allow us play the new album and we can’t even play parts of the new album the way they’re supposed to be played. It wasn’t making much sense to us so we decided to start with something old. There’s also the thing that the new album starts very mellow with ‘Epipelagic’ which is basically an intro that lasts for 2 minutes. That’s already 2 minutes out of the 25 minutes, so we just want go on stage and start playing full-on, so today we started with ‘Sewers Of The Soul’ off of ‘Anthropocentric’. It’s still not ideal though. We were told only a few days ago that we had to deal with 25 instead of 30 minutes because they added another band to the bill. So the set that we rehearsed was 30 minutes and now cutting out a song isn’t that easy for us when we mainly have 8-9 minute songs. It’s a bit difficult to really come up with something that works within these time constraints. We’re still experimenting with different song orders and set lists. It’s only the second show of the tour, so we might change it up. We have a couple of different set options. It’s all mainly based around Pelagial material but some of the set lists involve one or two older songs. But yeah, it’s very difficult. We had some issues on stage today too. I realized that my amp blew up twice yesterday and today, and then 15 minutes changeover is really, really tough to do for a band with our setup. We have a sequencer, backing tracks, MIDI-switched guitar effects and that kind of stuff, and it usually takes a little bit of time to set up, make sure everything works and that we hear ourselves on stage and don’t sound like a vacuum cleaner, like tonight. Everything was just really, really bad. It was a bit rough. I’ve been asking myself, ‘Are we really the band to do these kinds of tours and shows?’ I mean, it’s great to play to all these people because a lot of them haven’t heard us before. That’s why we’re doing this mainly, and the rooms are always full. It’s a privilege to be on this tour, it’s fucking awesome, but at the same time I’ve been questioning how much sense does it really make when we can’t deliver the show the way we want to. We can compromise on videos, lights and not having the production we have, but with 25-minute set times and those short changeovers it gets to a point where I’m questioning how much sense it makes. But it’s probably because I had a bad day today and we’re still in the process of grooving in and getting there, basically. So I hope it’ll be better the next few days.
I’m glad you admitted that because I was thinking the same thing too. So, obviously all songs in this set are with your vocalist but there’s an instrumental version of the album a lot of people have liked as well. Have you done or considered doing instrumental versions of some of these tracks when you play longer sets?
Yes, we have done that. We just toured Europe with Cult Of Luna in April-May and that set started and finished with vocal versions with instrumental tracks in between. It was good for Loic to get a short break and rest his vocal chords, but also because some songs just work really well as instrumentals. I think they all do to some degree. So yeah, we have been doing that and we are considering even playing full instrumental sets. We played three shows on the Cult Of Luna tour just instrumentally. It works out fine and it’s a different vibe, really. You get a different listening experience on the instrumental version as compared to the vocal version, and live it’s the same thing too when in the instrumental sets we have the projections of the Pelagial movie that comes with the limited edition of the album. It really makes up for the absence of vocals to a degree, where it’s a cinematic kind of performance that works really well, I think. But Loic is there he adds another dimension to it. Whenever we can, we want to play with Loic. But yeah, we have done instrumental sets and we’ll probably do that again, to keep it interesting for us and for people. I kind of like the idea that people don’t really know what they’re going to get beforehand. We’ve had some complaints about that too and people do want to know. It’s up to us to decide whether we want to give that to people or not. I haven’t really decided yet (laughs).
It’s pretty unique to have that option. But both versions of the album have been out for more than three months now. How have you observed the response and what version are people liking more? For me, it’s a mix. Some songs are better with vocals and others as instrumentals, in my opinion.
Yeah, people have been posting playlists on facebook, combining the vocal and instrumental songs, which is pretty cool. We premiered the instrumental version first, so that’s what people got to hear first. I think it was good that way around because when the album came out with vocals, it was something added to it rather than taking something away. I think that was the right way to do it. So we’ve had really mixed responses, but everyone seems to agree that it’s great to release an album like that as two versions and to leave people the choice. When I’m listening to music, a lot of times I just don’t feel like listening to vocal music! So it’s cool when you have the choice to listen to an album as instrumental or vocal version, and depending on what mood you’re in you can pick the album you want to listen to. I wish more bands were doing that, somehow. With a lot of my favorite bands, I really enjoy the vocalists but I would still love to have those albums as instrumentals. It’s a completely different experience when there’s no voice to distract you and you can pay more attention to what’s going on with the instruments. It’s not that you’re listening to a different album or a different mix, but you’re paying so much more attention to what the guitars, drums and bass is doing. I think it’s very interesting. I would like to see that more.
Yeah, specially in hard rock and metal, because there’s so much is going on with guitars, drums and bass. It would be cool to have more instrumental albums.
Exactly, and then there’s subtle sample and backing track layers that are usually fairly far in the back of the mix. You won’t even hear a lot of that stuff on the vocal version but when you listen to the instrumental version you get to hear those little details that are kind of layered under the main instruments and sounds. So there’s a lot of discover, and I think that makes the instrumental version particularly interesting.
The main thing for me about this album is, I find it to be a great travel companion. Whenever I’m on a train or a bus, this is my favorite album to listen to. I think it ties into the album’s concept perfectly, because it’s about a journey underwater, isn’t it?
Yeah, I can relate to that. It’s definitely a travel album. It’s got a flow from the beginning to the end. That’s what I really wanted to achieve, to not have separated songs but to have one piece of music that progresses from one point towards another. That’s what this album is doing. It’s starting at one point and ending in a completely different place basically. Everything that happens in between is like a gradual process. That’s where it’s different from most of our previous albums too. They were all written as isolated songs and in the end I tried out different song orders, fooled around with putting tracks in a certain order, but everything was written as individual, isolated tracks. This new album was written as one piece of music, and that’s what creates this kind of cohesion from the beginning to the end, this journey feeling that you’re talking about. You’re not really knowing where a track ends and the next one begins, and the riffs reappear after like 20-25 minutes. It’s all intertwined, basically, and that’s what I wanted to do.
On that note I wanted to ask you, do you have any favorite albums like that, albums you find to be good travel companions?
Yes I do, but it’s subject to change depending on where, when and with whom I’m traveling (laughs), but there are a couple of classics, of course. I always listen to Neurosis’ ‘Times Of Grace’ when I’m traveling. I think that’s a great album and it really needs to be listened to from beginning to end in one piece. But I also listen to stuff that’s not metal at all. There’s this Manu Chao album called Clandestino for example. It’s like a very commercial, alternative pop album, but it also has a certain theme that’s recurring throughout the album. All the songs are kind of connected by interludes. When I’ve been traveling in the tropics I’ve always heard songs from this album everywhere. That’s why I connected personally with a lot of places. There are some cheesy songs on that record but there are some really good songs on it, with good lyrics too. So that’s a good travel album for me, very un-metal (laughs).
Links:
theoceancollective.com
facebook.com/theoceancollective
twitter.com/oceancollective
Related:
[Gig Review] Summer Slaughter Rolls Through West Hollywood’s House Of Blues
Remaining Tour Dates:
7/24/2013 Diamond Ballroom – Oklahoma City, OK
7/26/2013 House of Blues – Dallas, TX
7/27/2013 House of Blues – Houston, TX
7/29/2013 House of Blues – Lake Buena Vista, FL
7/30/2013 The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
7/31/2013 Old City Courtyard – Knoxville, TN
8/01/2013 House of Blues – Myrtle Beach, SC
8/02/2013 The Filmore Silver Springs – Silver Springs, MD
8/03/2013 The Palladium – Worcester, MA
8/04/2013 The Trocadero – Philadelphia, PA
8/07/2013 Best Buy Theater – New York, NY
8/08/2013 Sound Academy – Toronto, ON
8/09/2013 Metropolis – Montreal, QC
8/10/2013 Upstate Concert Hall – Clifton Park, NY
8/11/2013 The Majestic Theatre – Detroit, MI
8/12/2013 House of Blues – Chicago, IL
8/13/2013 The Rave – Milwaukee, WI
8/14/2013 Station 4 – St. Paul, MN
8/16/2013 Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO
8/16/2013 Ogden Theatre – Denver, CO
8/17/2013 The Complex – Salt Lake City, UT
8/19/2013 Snowbox Sodo – Seattle, WA
8/20/2013 Roseland Ballroom – Portland, OR