Attention, U.S. fans of Oceano: If you were disappointed that you couldn’t hear the Chicago deathcore band’s new album, Ascendants (out March 24 on Earache Records), due to it only being available outside the country on French streaming site Deezer, your luck just improved. Billboard is streaming the nine-track set in its entirety. Listen below.
Oceano started teasing fans earlier this year with videos for tracks including “Dawn of Descent” and “Transient Gateways” and singer Adam Warren tells Billboard that fan feedback “has been very encouraging for the most part.” The reaction is understandable: Ascendants, their fourth album, is a carefully designed mix of disquieting tones, bowls-of-hell vocal roars, zippery tech metal riffage and blast-beat detonations that congeal into a ominous deathcore treatise.
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Warren describes Ascendants as “an exploration into the otherwise ignored, less-discovered theories of human origin in relation to our extraterrestrial ancient ancestry. Within, the album also delves into how these discoveries, in conjunction with other supernatural events, will change society once full disclosure becomes a reality.”
The vocalist says he wanted to explore these themes because he has had an interest in the supernatural and alternative theories since he allegedly saw his first UFO when he as a kid. “This led to me searching for answers, and finding some while also creating new questions. It has further consumed me during my research and discoveries while writing this album. Like myself, I felt this band has experienced a major awakening and breath of new life. I felt it was a good time to share these thoughts and hopefully open others up to a new perspective of our world.”
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Asked to compare Ascendants to its predecessor, 2013’s Incisions, Warren calls their differences “like night and day, but both very necessary for their counterpart’s existence, especially lyrically. Incisions is an album completely inspired by personal experiences as a way to cope and move on. Ascendants, on the other hand, comes years after the handful of events that inspired the previous album’s content.”
On the lyrical front, “Ascendants became an album written to grasp people’s interest enough to hopefully research its topics more and begin a dialogue about these lesser-discussed theories,” Warren explains. “The band’s driving focus for this album was to reclaim the aggressiveness that Oceano has been known best for, while also establishing a signature sound to re-establish ourselves as a heavyweight within the metal scene.”
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The complete track listing for Ascendants is as follows:
- Nephilim
- Transient Gateways
- The World Engine
- Dead Planet
- The Taken
- Dawn of Descent
- The Dulce Incident
- Arc of Creation
- External Existence
Ascendants is available for preorder in the U.S. and Europe and on iTunes.