Oceano
Living Chaos – Sumerian Records
As you’d expect from a genre that fuses metalcore to death metal, deathcore can often be a brutal listen, and when it’s a band such as Oceano doing the fusing, things don’t get much heavier. Since 2006, they’ve been ripping up the rulebook and album number six, Living Chaos,finds them in a similar mode. It’s been seven years since the band’s last album so there’s no time to waste and they get straight down to business with caustic opener ‘Wasted Life’. Aided by a thick, lustrous production, Living Chaos is an album that is rich in atmosphere and creates an oppressive, claustrophobic sound. Like a penny dropped in treacle, the album often moves with elephantine grace, yet it’s also surprisingly nimble and mixes up tempos with deft precision. Not since Godflesh’s Streetcleaner have I experienced an album as all-encompassing as Oceano’s latest, yet there are moments of light, such as the ethereally beautiful ‘Interlude’, that add moments of contrast, but mostly Living Chaos deals in the dangerous stuff; it’s the musical equivalent of throbbing plutonium direct from Chernobyl, and as such it should be handled with caution. Living Chaos, indeed.
Review by Peter Dennis.