25 Best Metal Albums Of The Decade
5. The Ocean - Pelagial (2013)
Musically and metaphorically, The Ocean's Pelegial is an epic journey.
This is a dual concept album that, at surface level, represents an odyssey to the sea's darkest depths, with each track titled after a progressively lower level and the music becoming darker, heavier, and more oppressive to reflect this. Allegorically, it's also a voyage into the psyche's deepest reaches, which songwriter Robin Staps calls "a movement towards the essence and origins of our desires, wishes, dreams, and all the f*cked up attributes inside of our own inner selves."
The concepts' ambitions are reflected in the music. Pelegial sounds exactly as Staps describes it. Melding sludge, progressive, and post-metal, The Ocean's most ambitious album's passage from light to dark is seamless and organic, taking you from the bright, clean vocals and guitars of the earlier tracks to the crushing sludge found towards the end. That structure is a massive draw and there's so much to enjoy on a technical level, but its emotional heft must be praised, too, with vocalist Loïc Rossetti literally sounding like his lungs are filling with water as the instrumentation drags him under.
Also: The Ocean made an album about the ocean. Good.