The Ocean CD Review
The Ocean
Aeolian
(Metal Blade)
Sharing an album title with the music-theory name for the primary minor scale might lead you to believe this is a sea of guitar wankery.
Actually, through the 53-minute ordeal of Aeolian, a single guitar solo does not come to mind. Not to say there isn’t one — there could be a backwards melt on “Austerity” — but the focus is a pulverizing cross of grindcore, death metal, and the detuned riffing found everywhere from Pelican to Mastodon. Traditional screeching has been replaced with atonal chords and alternating grunts and screams. The four, odometer-pushing tracks (“Austerity,” The City In The Sea,” “Killing The Flies,” “Queen Of The Food-Chain”) tend to come off as amalgams of riffs no one wanted to (but should have) discarded, but out in the ocean there appears to be a lot of unnecessary things humanity has created.
— Kevin Keegan
Click here to download “Swoon.”
