OCEANSIZE

I don't like alternative rock with long orchestrations and a couple of experimentation so called "prog" as Radiohead or Dredg, but I have to say Oceansize is one of those bands and they are very good in what they are doing. If you are looking for an alternative rock sound with some moody vibes and changes between depressive tunes and heavy explosive rock with not so complex arrangements but well constructed songs, here you have a good album to start... so, let's see...

The album is plagued by guitar tunes and an average singer who can sings very soft and melodic (in an alternative way) and then give good raw scream-edge rocking voice which is nice because the music tends to travel from moody ballads to heavy rock. There's a couple of keyboards here and there and the drums and bass makes a decent work to put it all together and give an entertaining time while you will feel too mainstream for times but the instrumental parts will show you that you have a serious band here doing music in a very good musical way...

Catalyst and You Wish are the highlights of the album, but there's plenty material to anyone who is in the route of Porcupine Tree or Dredg, but I insist this band and this album has much more to offer, the production is tip top, very clean and well balanced. And extra advice is that you most listen to it when you want to relax a bit, because the moody parts are touching and very melancholic so you can dive in and let you go? it's a good exercise for after the work, but don't hear it if you are too rushed out, It won't feel the same...

Their album Frames is better, but here you have good piece of music that deserves a place in your collection... 4 stars for a good band who promises a lot still...

Commemorative T-Shirt starts as an homage to Oldfield's Tubular Bells. It grows into a captivating epic rock song with beautiful vocals, brilliant drumming and 3 thick layers of guitars. It's one of the first Oceansize songs that doesn't remind me immediately of some other band. Oh yes, they have grown up. Unfamiliar continues the thick guitar tapestries and varies them with catchy and intricate riffing. Again it's remarkable how much they have matured. The verses still have a regular indie vocal line, but the music below it explores more sophisticated areas and time signatures. Quite ironically, even though it's the shortest track here it's a tad too long.

Trail of Fire is another big composition. I sure hear some Porcupine Tree influences here, more so then on their previous albums. If Oceansize didn't want to be tagged prog before, then they sure fully embrace it here. Savant is a welcome rest-point, it's a slowly progressing post-rock study with plenty of spacey guitars and vocal effects, which might be another indication of the Porcupine influence. Only Twin gradually picks up a higher speed again. It's not the easiest track to get into, a lot of gloomy atmosphere is built up during the first half, but the melodic development in the second half could have been better.

An Old Friend is one of the most chilling moments here: brooding minor chords, ghostly whispers and a slowly pounding drum beat. Almost hesitantly, beautiful guitar picking is added on this funeral march. Halfway in, heavier guitars lift up the mood. Not for long, the ending progressively decomposes the sonic texture again, till only the bass note remains.

A bit of creepy feedback builds up and launches into the heavy Sleeping Dogs, featuring complex time signature riffing that is similar to how Porcupine Tree incorporated math rock influences on In Absentia. It has potential but the wilder section with the distorted screams should better have been handled by a guest vocalist with a real death throat. Now it lacks that stroke of real aggression to make it work.

The Frame ends my version of the album. (Even though the package says 'bonus Live DVD', they didn't deem it necessary to add the superior bonus Voorhees!). The Frame hasn't yet convinced me of its qualities, the vocal lines aren't really remarkable. As far as I'm concerned, Voorhees should have been the preferred pick to end the album. It's an 11 minute epic with rich textures, dramatic crescendo's and passionate playing.

This band never sounded much like space-rock to me, more like post-rock or experimental/post metal. This trivial notion is still relevant when it comes to rating the album. It's a 3.5 stars that I would have to round down when comparing it to Floyd masterpieces. However, when compared to similar bands like Tool, Maudlin of the Well and Anathema, 4 stars are deserved.

Oceansize's second is a worthy follow up to the debut, but all the peaks sit in the first half, resulting in a problemetically oversized album. Given the quality material that ended up on some of their EPs and singles, this album could have been a lot stronger.

The beginning is good though, The Charm Offensive is a spaced-out twist on Tool, executed by a good singer. Heaven Alive loans the funky vibe - and pretty much everything else as well - from Jane's Addiction, except for the voice, which sits somewhere in between Kevin Moore and Lane Staley. The opening bars and the ending of A Homage to a Shame seem to come straight off a Sonic Youth album. In between sits a Tool song. Meredith is a spaced-out musing and the first moment that has some Floydian traits, still the guitar similarities with the Cure are far bigger. Anyway, it's one of my favourite songs on the album together with Music for A Nurse, another attractive laid-back chunk of atmospheric post-rock, with a gloomy mood and soft vocals that remind me (in a good way) of the long tracks at the end of the Cure's Disintegration album.

At this point, the album has run its course, New Pin and No Tomorrow have their moments but get aggravating pretty quickly. Also the remaining tracks are far below the first half of the album. Oceansize sure had everyone in the band into position, but not every song yet.

Oceansize is an enjoyable but second class indie/alt rock band, certainly not in the same league as their heroes Jane's Addiction, Tool, Sonic Youth, Radiohead or the Cure. Anyway, as the first 5 songs show, Oceansize have it in them to create a great album, would that be the next one? 3.5 stars for now.

Relapse isn't second rate in any way, it was probably just too long to fit on the already oversized Efforescense. For once, this track justifies all space-rock references that are bestowed on Oceansize. It has 2.30 minutes of ambient post-rock picking at the start before it launches into an excellent bass guitar driven groove that Colin Edwin would have been proud of. The vocals are mesmerizing and beautiful, the guitars wide and spacey. The second half of the track sticks closer to the ambitious indie prog of Efforescense.

An EP with 10 minutes of unreleased music is collectors material by default. The 3 stars can't obviously be compared to a full length 3 star album, they merely serve to indicate that it's a very good track.

The noise rock of One Out of None is a lot more aggressive then anything else they had tried so far. It starts with a nice math metal intro but the song itself is pretty unremarkable, too typical emo pop indie for my taste. Paper Champion tries hard to emulate the pondering side of Tool. There are also some traces of industrial music in the style of Stabbing Westward. Not bad but I've got an overdose of this kind of stuff in the 90's.

After a short ambient interlude, Oceansize get to the most interesting track on this release. Dead Dogs is a concise take on post-rock, starting with a pensive mood and building up to a wall of sound in just under 5 minutes. As The Smoke Clears is an adventurous composition, but like most material here, it lacks the song quality of the albums around it. It treads around without much of an impression.

With not one track of outstanding quality, I'll have to convict this EP to fans only territory.

Called progressive against their own will, Oceansize's music is nevertheless packed with progressive tendencies and bears many similarities to prog-related indie like Radiohead and to emotive prog like Riverside and Porcupine Tree. Of course their music has nothing to do with playing faster then what the human ear can follow, nor with music that does reproductions of old progrock glories, nor with any definition of Progressive Rock that concentrates on style and form. Oceansize is a modern rock band that takes in whatever idea, influence or sound that fits their songs, just like King Crimson, Genesis or Yes did in their time.

For all those reasons I would really want to love them with all my heart, but regardless how overwhelmed I was in the beginning, this debut suffers from a typical child disease called too many ideas. It makes the album both hard to sit through in one go and diminishes the overall quality with repeated listens. The problem is that some songs are too long for their own good and that the entire 75 album overstays its welcome.

There is spectacular material aplenty though, like One Day, You Wish, Saturday Morning Breakfast Show. Oceansize are named after a song by Jane's Addiction (one of those early 90's bands that screamed prog at me from the first time I heard them) and sonic outbursts as in Saturday Morning Breakfast Show or as in Massive Bereavement are a clear indication of their influence. Other songs like Remember Where You are and Amputee offer too much of the same and distract from this band's obvious talents.

Oceansize's debut is an impressive album, mixing an equal part of post-rock, emo, indie and modern progressive rock that lovers of Porcupine Tree, Anathema or Radiohead should lend their ear too. It could have been a 5 star 60 minute album, but it has become a 75 minute 4 star. I'm sure some people will say that's mathematically the same thing but music is no math for me, this album suffers under the bulk of material and would have greatly benefited from careful editing.

Everything I felt that Oceansize had in them when I first saw them has finally come out on this record. It's complex, it's beautiful and contemplative. Flowing seamlessly between the tracks, it fills you with a strong feeling of "wholeness" and purpose.

The one thing I can say against it is that it might be a bit slow for some and even if you are a fan some days it can be hard getting completely into.

This is Oceansize's greatest release to date. A must have for fans of the genre.

4,5/5

I have been spinning this album for about three entire days now and it's still growing on me. First, I didn't expect too much from these guys because all the comparisons -most in a negative way- to Porcupine Tree and Tool, both bands that I feel soulless and quite boring... but Oceansize stands above and without hesitation... It seems like the formula is the same, some mellow moods, strong alternative rock presence, a lot of interesting riffing and a standard singer directing the music... well, I'm not a fan of all of the above but feel very good about this album... the progress of the songs are interesting but never lose the soul focus, the emotions are always there and they redirect the songs into a more agressive feeling just in the right places and times... the music flows nice and smoth and you can feel surrounded by a great vibe and little mellow atmosphere... just great...

I feel this band is really amazing, now I'm digging on they other productions and what I'm not sure is which album is better... each one has it's own direction and everything sound great about each... so, if your'e looking for a band with great feeling and development in the routes of Tool and PT, this will satisfy you... is just like them but better, no pretentious "we are so original" music but tight and well performed. When you hear and album like this, you wonder how they manage to keep the whole album in such a great vibe and flowing so well...

The highlights: the whole album... com'n, try it... dive in and enjoy this amazing journey. This is a great place to start trying progressive rock, it conserves the regular alternative rock vibe but in a musical way and alouding the songs to grow... so, 5 stars is what this deserves for sure... and I'm afraid the other albums will get it too...

Well, at first I'd like to mention it is not the Oceansize we used to know before. IMHO Oceansize is a great modern Heavy Prog band (famous for its neverending energy). This EP demostrates a lighter and mellower side of this band - but in fact it works!

All the tracks here are very atmospheric, but I don't consider them post-rock, like some people tend to do. This EP is just like an unplugged version of Oceansize's music. Energy and power and everything else that makes Oceansize a noble modern Prog band is still here: complex structures (extra-complex, I'd say), excellent polyphony of the three guitars, massive drumming (special respect to Mark), magic atmosphere.

Home & Minor is a great addition to every Prog/Art rock fan, who doesn't reckon that Prog is dead. Of course, this music is not Art rock in its former sense - but you'll hardly find any modern band similar to Oceansize. In addition to that, we have at hand a nice example of what Oceansize really are. They can play different music having their own style.

I've enjoyed mostly the second track and Home & Minor itself, but the other tracks are good as well. Actually, there is a filler (Monodrones), but it doesn't mar the whole integrity of the EP (suppose there's no as such concept here).

Excellent, but we're looking forward to hear a more heavy Oceansize on their next masterpiece, indeed.

The title track - with pride of place on "Effloresce" is one of my favourite Oceansize tracks - a most peculiar piece that I've never heard anything quite like, but at the same time a really good track - a classic piece of Oceansize that kind of defines what they are like - starts slowly with a most peculiar rhythm/ time signature building in strength to a lot of power and volume. Magnificent

Breed Siamese is a really nice rocking out sort of song, whilst "Massive Bereavement" is Oceansize's central piece of music - building from grace to power that really uplifts you - a well-good live version this (noting that some of their other live stuff has been a bit lower sound quality)

If you get the chance - go and see this band live - they are bloomin' good!!!