A lot of bands wouldn’t have recovered. From 2022 to 2025, post-metal visionaries The Ocean lost two-thirds of their members, with the lineup that made fan-favorite albums Phanerozoic I (2018), Phanerozoic II (2020) and Holocene (2023) stripping itself away. After a victorious final bow at Hellfest last year celebrating this lineup that had lasted for over a decade, only founding guitarist, songwriter and lyricist Robin Staps, longtime bassist Mattias Hägerstrand and new drummer Jordi Farré (also of Crippled Black Phoenix) remained.
Those who stayed could easily have called it quits, but instead, they rebuilt with and re-emerged with Solaris: The most ambitious album of The Ocean‘s 25-year career. A near-70-minute journey to the stars and back, it’s based on late Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky‘s masterpiece of the same name.
The first single from this upcoming album is “Light Pollution,” which begins with familiar synth textures that connect seamlessly to its predecessor, Holocene, before gradually picking up momentum and moving in a different direction. The song culminates in a towering, slow-burning finale of orchestral grandeur, suffocating heaviness, and subdued rhythmic complexity.
“Orbital motion or particles and grains of sand / is there any meaning in these patterns”
New vocalist Enrico Tiberi sings at the beginning of the song. Orbital motion is not only the gravitationally curved trajectory of a celestial body; in another context — alluding to early scenes in the film Solaris — orbital motion in water refers to the circular or elliptical paths water particles follow as waves pass through, transferring energy without moving the water itself forward.
“Light Pollution” explores the pitfalls of 21st-century technology and humanity’s growing obsession with simulated reality. But do the many technological and social advances of recent decades truly represent progress?
“We’ve witnessed several communication revolutions throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but have we actually become any better at communicating?” comments Robin Staps. “Has there really been forward movement, or has the motion been orbital — have we merely been treading water? Light pollution symbolizes the transparency of the postmodern age, permeating everything and everyone. Everything is constantly visible; we’ve lost the darkness to hide in, and with the relentless glare of communication, we’ve also lost our privacy.”
For the music video for “Light Pollution,” THE OCEAN have enlisted the talents of filmmaker Craig Murray (Mogwai, Converge), to create a narrative arc that combines the arrival of new vocalists Lane Shi and Enrico Tiberi with the song’s lyrics. Murray‘s attention to detail is a match for The Ocean; his specificity with regards to costume, design and props elevates the visual accompaniment to Light Pollution to a cinematic level. “Craig is a one-man army”, comments Staps. “Every detail of the film exists in his head before he starts to shoot, he’s got hand-drawn sketches of every single scene. He gets up at 6.30 to make moulds, shoot and direct, and he’s still up at 2am glueing tentacles or smearing slime and sand over faces. He’s a machine.”
With their 12th studio album, The Ocean usher in a new era in the band’s 25-year history. Emmanuel Jessua of Hypno5e and Marco Gennaro join on guitar, while vocalists Enrico Tiberi and Lane Shi (Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Otay:Onii) step in to replace Loïc Rossetti.
For the recording of Solaris, the band further expanded its creative circle with contributions from Thorsten Quaeschning of TANGERINE DREAM on modular synthesizers. Jens Bogren, who previously mixed the band’s landmark albums Pelagial and Phanerozoic I and II, once again handled mixing and mastering.
Solaris is arguably the boldest album to bear THE OCEAN name so far. It’s musically intrepid, it’s conceptually fascinating and it’s got many vital things to say about the world around us. The band have well and truly resurfaced, and they’ve done so in shimmering form.
Solaris track listing:
- “52°30’11” N, 13°26’12“ E”
- “Departure Song”
- “Light Pollution”
- “Simulacra”
- “Belligerence”
- “Ultima Esperanza”
- “Milk Of My Dreams”
- “51°28’30” S, 73°6’11” W”
The Ocean is:
Robin Staps – guitar, vocals
In addition, the following musicians performed on this record:
Mattias Hägerstrand – bass
Jordi Farré – drums, percussion
Thorsten Quaeschning – keys
Enrico Tiberi – vocals, keys
Lane Shi – vocals
Emmanuel Jessua – guitar
Marco Gennaro – guitar
Orestis Zafiriou – keys
Simen Eifring – trombone
Jiawei Zhang – vibraphone
