For several years now, Oceans Rise has been making its mark in the Florida music with a complex take on instrumental post-rock and metal. The quintet — Matt Marino, Alex Knopke, and Mark Gonzalez on guitar, bassist Kevin Meadows and drummer Dustin Rogers — is made up of longtime scene veterans that’ve cut their teeth in several bands both past and present.
The experience shows in Ocean Rise’s tight live sets and painstaking devotion to their craft. With a 2017 full length Ablation already under its belt, the band plans to release Heliotropics on Friday Saturday at The Hub in downtown Tampa. The EP marks an exciting turn in musical direction for the band and also serves as its finest material to date.
The first major change listeners will hear is the addition of a variety of vocals to the music. Aside from a few one-off tracks, the band has been purely instrumental to date, and the inclusion of heavy vocal presence on three of four songs on Heliotropics signify a stark change in course for the band. Marino provides the bulk of the vocals and goes from beautifully-sung clean passages to harsher screams that fit both perfectly in the mix and feel like they've been a part of the band all along. It's an incredibly effective and welcome addition that adds a great deal of dynamics to the songs, which also find the band leaning more the heaviest metal it’s ever recorded; fans of Ocean Rise’s more melodic material shouldn't be worried, however, as there are plenty of beautiful and ethereal passages mixed in.
Credit Rock Garden Studio’s Dan Byer with elevating these songs to new heights with a clear, crisp recording that still has an organic feel which represents the band's transcendent live performances. An essential listen for all fans of forward-thinking metal.
Listen to “Hessdalen Lights” on Spotify.
Oceans Rise Album Release w/Aurorae/Gullwing. Sat. Aug. 24, 9 p.m. No cover. The Hub Bar, Tampa. aestheticized.com.
Follow @cl_music on Twitter to get the most up-to-date music news, concert announcements and local tunes. Subscribe to our newsletter, too.
