The Ocean

The Ocean (also known as The Ocean Collective) is a German post-metal band built around Berlin guitarist and composer Robin Staps, who founded it in 2000 and has steered it through dozens of rotating musicians without ever loosening its grip on scale and ambition. Their records are concept albums in the fullest sense: Precambrian and the two-volume Phanerozoic trace the geological history of the Earth, Pelagial descends through the ocean's depth zones with music engineered to grow darker and more claustrophobic as the pressure mounts, and the paired Heliocentric and Anthropocentric assemble a sustained critique of Christianity. The sound welds the weight of sludge and hardcore to orchestral strings, brass, and electronic texture, an approach the band has half-jokingly called ambient soundtrack doomrock. Phanerozoic II entered the German album charts at number nine, and a brittle star found in the deep sea, Ophiacantha oceani, was named in the band's honor.