A metal album that opens with a track about the Cambrian explosion and closes with the Permian mass extinction could have been a lecture. Instead, the German post-metal band The Ocean turned nearly three-quarters of an hour of geological history into one of the most gripping heavy records of its decade. On November 2, 2018, Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic arrived on Metal Blade Records, and the risk paid off almost immediately.
A concept reaching back to the Palaeozoic
The band had spent years building a reputation for concept albums, but none had reached this far back. Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic is devoted to the Phanerozoic eon, and every track is named after a period of the Palaeozoic era. The previous album, Pelagial, had come out in 2013, so five years of silence made this release feel like a statement rather than a routine follow-up.
What made the concept work was that Robin Staps wrote all the tracks as stories, not textbook entries. 'Silurian: Age of Sea Scorpions' and 'Devonian: Nascent' both stretch well past the nine-minute mark. Those lengths gave the music room to shift between progressive metal, post-metal and sludge metal, the three genres the album is usually filed under, without ever losing the thread.
What made the concept work was that Robin Staps wrote all the tracks as stories, not textbook entries.
Two volumes and a three-minute track
The album was conceived as the first of two volumes, which raised the stakes: if this one collapsed, the whole project would look like hubris. Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic / Cenozoic would follow in 2020, but first The Ocean had to prove that a record about glaciation and rainforest collapse could hold a listener. 'The Carboniferous: Rainforest Collapse' lasts only 3 minutes, a sharp contrast to the long tracks around it, and that contrast became part of the drama.
One guest appearance helped the album cross over beyond metal circles. Jonas Renkse of the Swedish band Katatonia sings on 'Devonian: Nascent', and several reviewers singled out his vocal as the record's high point. Loudwire placed the song among the best metal songs of 2018, a rare honour for an eleven-minute track on a geological concept album.
Reviews and German chart placing
Critics rewarded the ambition. AllMusic gave the album 4 stars, Blabbermouth.net rated it 8.5 out of 10, Metal.de awarded 9 out of 10, and Sputnikmusic settled on 4 out of 5. In Germany, the album reached number 41 on the Offizielle Top 100 chart, a modest showing that mattered less than the reviews, which treated Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic as a serious piece of art rather than a novelty.
The album was recorded across three studios, Sundlaugin Studio, Hidden Planet Studios and Christoph Kokos Studios, with production by Jens Bogren and Tony Lindgren. That spread of locations suited a record about the whole planet: the Cambrian seas, the Ordovician ice, the Devonian forests and the Permian catastrophe all had to feel like one continuous story, and the production kept the sound coherent. The album's presence in major music databases reflects its reach. It carries a Discogs master release ID of 1449888 and an Encyclopaedia Metallum entry under ID 733429, while MusicBrainz lists the release group under 08da7ca3-b4e7-472c-983d-2628a6f17d5b.
The closing track, 'Permian: The Great Dying', runs 9 minutes and ends the album on the largest extinction event in Earth's history. It is a bleak finish, but it also sets up the second volume perfectly: after the Palaeozoic dies, the Mesozoic and Cenozoic can begin. The Ocean had gambled that metal fans would follow them through hundreds of millions of years, and the gamble worked.