PRECAMBRIAN

Germany's The Ocean have established themselves in the upper echelons of modern progressive metal right alongside the likes of Haken and Between the Buried and Me. Their (very) slow ascent to greatness was kicked off with the release of this very record,Precambrian, a sprawling 2-disc epic concept album that establishes many of the musical and lyrical elements that The Ocean would continue to employ in later releases.

Despite formally being a post metal act, The Ocean always had a punchier and groovier edge to their riffs, much in the vein of Lamb of God or Meshuggah but with a sludgy gloss. While the first disc takes this tendency to its brutal and oh so primal extreme, the second disc sees group truly explore their experimental and progressive side with the inclusion of chamber instruments and more ambient passages. Like many of the group's future releases, the record is disguised as a concept album about some high-brow scientific topic when, in reality, the science merely serves as a metaphor for a much deeper explorations of man's nature.

Precambrian deserves its perfect score but, in hind sight, its hard not to see how it could have been even better. At this stage in their development, The Ocean still functioned as a 'collective' with a heavy reliance on guest and revolving door musicians. As such, vocalist Loic Rossetti and his signature blend of heavy, clean, and distorted vocals was not yet apart of group's sound. There is little doubt that side 2's melodic passages would have been significantly enhanced with Loic's contributions.