…and Oceans Announce New Album The Regeneration Theory
Symphonic Black Metal Band’s Experimental Seventh Album Pulls from Industrial, Electronic and a Best-Selling Novel
…and Oceans has persistently defied musical confines. But while the Finns have always ebbed and flowed between different extremes, the band’s upcoming seventh album is their most expansive body of work.
The Regeneration Itinerary pulls from across …and Oceans’ 30-year history. Inspired by Paulo Coelho’s best-selling novel The Alchemist, on their new album, the band meld black and death metal with symphonic, industrial and electronic elements, striking a balance between darkness and light.
The album’s lead single “Inertiae” embodies this relentless evolution, fusing together symphonic chaos and industrial trance-dance beats.
The Regeneration Itinerarycomes out May 23rd, 2025 on Season of Mist.
Pre-order & Pre-save
https://orcd.co/andoceanstheregenerationitinerary
The Regeneration Itinerary is a celestial compass guiding listeners through the prognostications of time and the shadows of consciousness. Recorded at SoundSpiral Audio by Juho Räihä, and brought to life by the alchemy of Tore Stjerna’s mixing and mastering, …and Oceans upcoming new album is a tour de force that promises to redefine the veteran band, while also pushing the boundaries of symphonic black metal to uncharted territories.
“Inertiae” serves as a prelude to The Regeneration Theory‘s labyrinthine odyssey. The album’s lead single lays bare the duality of light and dark, striking a balance that is synonymous with …and Oceans’ iconic sound. Its mesmerizing blend captures the cosmic interplay between chaos and order. As the song unfolds, Mathias Lillmåns’ potent vocals dance with the intricate rhythms crafted by guitarist Timo Kontio and keyboardist Antti Simonen.
“Inertiae, the bringer of paralysis, the guardian of my sleep.” Mathias says about …and Oceans’ new single. “The one that opens my eyes, keeps my flesh in stasis and my mind barely touching the surface. This track is a dialog, like a servant addressing his master, between me and the bane of my slumber.”
The visualizer for “Inertiae” was created by Aarni Visuals.
Tracklist:
1. Inertiae (4:30) [WATCH]
2. Förnyelse i Tre Akter (5:07)
3. Chromium Lungs, Bronze Optics (4:29)
4. The Form and the Formless (3:32)
5. Prophetical Mercury Implement (6:57)
6. The Fire in Which We Burn (3:04)
7. The Ways of Sulphur (4:17)
8. I Am Coin, I Am Two (4:25)
9. Towards the Absence of Light (4:49)
10. The Terminal Filter (5:22)
11. Copper Blood, Titanium Scars (Bonus Track) (4:14)
12. The Discord Static (Bonus Track) (3:35)
Full runtime: 54:22
Country: Finland (FI)
Genre: Experimental/Electronic, Symphonic Black Metal
FFO: Dimmu Borgir, Behemoth, Samael
Chaos chameleons. Nocturnal shapeshifters. The skyward trajectory of idiosyncratic Finnish extremists …and Oceans has been serpentine and sublime.
Since rising in 1995 from the ashes of death metal outfit Festerday, the group’s esoteric take on extreme music has seem them draw on a gamut on contrasting elements, ranging from black and death metal to classical, industrial and EBM, forever questing through various line-up changes, defying expectations while remaining wholly true to themselves.
“We’ve never been tied to one particular genre,” explains founding member, guitarist Timo Kontio. “As a band, we are driven to explore, to traverse unfamiliar landscapes, while always preserving our core sound. It’s about striking a balance. There’s the constant need in this band for renewal and ambition, but never at a cost to our identity.”
The group’s earliest albums, The Dynamic Gallery of Thoughts (1998) and The Symmetry of I: The Circle of O (1999), combined bombastic synth-driven salvos, blisteringly raw guitars, piercing banshee shrieks and ornate gothic arrangements in eviscerating wrath-fuelled blasts, while several celestial passages and near-dungeon synth segues already demonstrated the band’s need to mix things up.
A more seismic shift came in the mutant forms of A.M.G.O.D. (2001) and Cypher (2002), which saw …and Oceans transmogrify into a crushing cybernetic colossus, bulldozing into dystopian anti-futures with batteries of scalding techno beats and chugging palm-muted malevolence.
Accompanied by frontman Kena Strömsholm’s android syntax, the band’s dark heart now pumped corrosive hydraulic fluids around digital membranes, its symphonic black metal supercharged by martial industrial rhythms and infectious melo-death grooves.
The metamorphosis intensified with an interim rebrand as …and Oceans disbanded and its members reassembled under the name Havoc Unit in 2005, a vehicle for further mechanised contagions and noise worship, issuing their sole full-length, h.IV+ (Hoarse Industrial Viremia), in 2008.
But throughout these detours the mournful essence of …and Oceans’ singular universe endured, gathered together by a lamenting thread, a dolefulness unique to the Finnish scene, borne emphatically in the impassioned guitars of Kontio and his axe-wielding brother-in-arms, Teemu Saari. “Melancholia is everywhere, it’s in all the music that I make, especially my lead work,” elaborates Kontio. “It’s a key factor, distinctive to the whole …and Oceans catalogue.”
The band’s insatiable thirst for reinvention would subsequently find sustenance in its 90s roots, recasting the symphonic pomp of the past in the ardent furnace of experience and experimentation. Reconvening under the …and Oceans banner in 2017, the resulting brace of albums – Cosmic World Mother (2020) and As in Gardens, So in Tombs (2023) – redefined the group once more with ornate epics brimful of deliciously grim Karelian melodies and the chimerical atmospheres of keyboardist Antti Simonen, while new vocalist Mathias Lillmåns, replacing the departing Strömsholm, reinforced ties to black metal’s second wave with his devastatingly toxic rasp.
Now, 30 years on from their auspicious birth, …and Oceans have unveiled their most accomplished statement yet. A flamboyant distillation of the group’s grand nocturnal art, The Regeneration Itinerary assimilates all their hopes, dreams and influences into an uncompromising document of ravenous intent, with inebriating stylistic hybrids such as ‘Inertiae’ and ‘The Form and the Formless’ seamlessly fusing the heady onrush of symphonic black metal to the bludgeoning pulse of Simonen’s trance-dance hypnosis.
“The new album can be seen as a synthesis of our entire back catalogue,” suggests Lillmåns. “But there are new levels of extremity, too, ones that we’ve never reached before. These songs simply demanded harsher vocals. The riffs commanded it, and who am I to disobey?”
“This is our most experimental album since our comeback,” states Kontio. “It might be considered a continuation of the music we made in the 90s, but the sound has ripened and developed as our individual tastes have broadened, our inspirations subconsciously feeding into the band’s sound, necessitating change. From the very start, this band has encouraged progression and growth.”
Representing an intrepid summation of …and Oceans’ extraordinary journey, their continuing evolution, The Regeneration Itinerary locates the band’s dramatic thaumaturgical blends within a conceptual framework of opposites (and opposition).
“The Regeneration Itinerary explores the interplay between darkness and light, chaos and order, spiritual and material realms, with each song embodying an experience for the mind and body, navigating a passage to the present moment,” explains Lillmåns.
“The album works like a guide,” he continues. “Teaching us that not everything can be defined as simply being ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘light’ or ‘dark’, ‘copper’ or mercury’, underscoring the perpetual dance of dualities in the human experience.”
Line-up
Mathias Lillmåns – Vocals
Teemu Saari – Guitar
Timo Kontio – Guitar
Pyry Hanski – Bass
Antti Simonen – Keyboards
Kauko Kuusisalo – Drums
Production Credits
Recorded at Inka Studio / SoundSpiral Audio, Orimattila, Finland.
Producer & Engineered by Juho Räihä.
Mixed & Mastered by Tore Stjerna at Necromorbus Studio, Söderfors, Sweden.
Cover Art
Adrien Bousson
Biography
Spencer Grady
Pre-save & Pre-order
https://orcd.co/andoceanstheregenerationitinerary
Follow …and Oceans
Bandcamp: https://andoceans.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/andoceans/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andoceans_official/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0rWmH68lIyVOGYhhvayFzu
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/artist/and-oceans/32204550
Deezer: https://www.deezer.com/artist/11172
TIDAL: https://tidal.com/browse/artist/3565685
Booking Contact
Redback Promotion: Marita (marita@redback-promotion.com)
Rockhopper Nem Agency: Aki (aki@nem.fi)
Available Formats
Digital Download
CD Digipak
CD Clamshell – Special Collector’s Box (includes 20-page booklet, gold medal coin + acrylic coasters)
12″ Vinyl Gatefold – Black
12″ Coloured Vinyl Gatefold – Crystal Clear & Silver Marbled
12″ Coloured Vinyl Gatefold – Crystal Clear & Gold Marbled
12″ Coloured Vinyl Gatefold – Orange & Black Marbled
12″ Coloured Vinyl Gatefold – Silver & Black Marbled
