Rockfreaks.net

Being As An Ocean

Waiting For Morning To Come

Written by: PP on 30/05/2018 19:13:22

For their fourth full-lenght album "Waiting For Morning To Come", Being As An Ocean has quite a surprise in store for their long-time fans. Their early material was essentially rooted in metalcore and melodic hardcore, but since then, they have slowly but surely shifted their focus towards straight-up post-hardcore with a few spoken word-styled segments here and there. Nothing quite as radical though as on this album, however, which sees the group fully embrace tranquil passages and soft, subdued electronics amidst their stormy post-hardcore sections.

"Black & Blue" offers an early sign of what to expect. It's encompassed in electronic effects similar to what you might experience in a lounge specializing in house music, just with rhytmically paced, spoken-word esque screamed vocals on top. It's symptomatic to the rest of the album, which in a sense sounds like you merged Hotel Books, Listener, and La Dispute together with the latest soft electronics DJ making rounds in the club scene right now.

In fact, lenghty segments of "Waiting For Morning To Come" features extensive use of such electronics that old fans will undoubtedly feel confused, if not outright lost on this album. The question arising from that is, of course, whether the radical stylistic shift does the band any good?

The answer will depend entirely on whether you swear by metalcore or accept the fact that the genre is evolving (think While She Sleeps' latest album as a good example) into a different direction. There's certainly lots to like here: "Dissolve" is beautiful, and the quiet, tranquil atmosphere of songs like "Glow" and "And Fade Away When Morning Came" helps contrast the screams in a way that just wasn't possible before in the louder format.

From this vantage point, the record is a decent listen. It's an unusual take on post-hardcore that works because of its novelty, even if the "Eb tahT srewoP ehT" song is ridiculously pointless (it's essentially a recorded song played backwards and sounds totally broken as a result). The material on record is consistent and has enough echoes from the brilliance of Hotel Books to appeal to this writer, even if it wasn't among the best releases last year.

Download: Dissolve, Black & Blue, OK
For the fans of: Hotel Books, Listener, La Dispute,
Listen: Facebook

Release date 08.09.2017
Self-Released