| Birmingham, UK metal quintet OCEANS ATE ALASKA — James Harrison [vocals], Chris Turner [drums], James “Jibs” Kennedy [guitar], Adam Zytkiewicz [guitar], and Mike Stanton [bass] — have released an instrumental version of their latest album Disparity, out now via Fearless Records. The instrumental edition is available here.” For Oceans, the instrumental release was always done out of pure demand,” the band explains. “We put a tremendous effort into making the composition as dynamically rich as possible, no aspect of the instrumentation goes without a lot of time, care, and patience put in. When you apply this work ethic, it kinda makes sense that listeners want to hear a version without vocals; that’s not to say they don’t belong to the music, but the human voice tends to capture our ears before everything else so it’s a cool experience to be able to listen to everything that surrounds it.”With Disparity, our youthful sporadic compositional tendencies have been tempered, but only to give space to our lo-fi progressions, big room energy, and fundamental song structure. We are very excited about this instrumental release as it will be a new experience for everyone!”The band is also doing a 24-hour live stream of all of the visualizers for the instrumental versions. Tune in here. DISPARITY TRACK LISTING: “Paradigm” “Nova” “Metamorph” “Shallow Graves” “Sol” “Empty Space” “Plague Speech” “Disparity” “Dead Behind The Eyes” “New Dawn” “Hallucinogen” ABOUT OAA + DISPARITY: Oceans Ate Alaska has carefully and quietly progressed to this point. Following their 2015 debut Lost Isles, they presented Hikari in 2017. The song “Hansha” amassed over 12 million Spotify streams as the album surpassed 40 million total streams. Upon arrival, New Noise Magazine raved, “Optimistic, empowering, and mesmerizing, Oceans Ate Alaska’s bold sophomore album is a true progressive metalcore triumph.” Along the way, they toured with the likes of Wage War, The Plot In You, We Came As Romans, Like Moths to Flames, and more. Throughout 2021, they assembled what would become Disparity. Inspired by a mutual love for the likes of Bonobo and Alina Baraz, collaborator Clem Cherry enhanced the production with airy beat craft and immersive sonic accents. At the same time, they absorbed the unease of the world, infusing a post-apocalyptic thematic undercurrent. In the end, Oceans Ate Alaska encodes an important message about Disparity. “For us, it’s about uplifting listeners,” Harrison says. “We want them to feel empowered to realize they can be the change they want. It’s still what we’re doing. It’s been a long time since we put out an album, but we’re here.” Indeed it has been a minute since the last OAA album but it was entirely worth the wait. |
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