…and Oceans Channel Fierce Reflection on “Prophetical Mercury Implement”
New Album from Symphonic Black Metal Band is their Most Expansive Yet
While they’ve always ebbed and flowed between different extremes over the course of the past 30 years, on their upcoming seventh album, …and Oceans are surging onto the scene with their most expansive experiment in symphonic black metal. The Regeneration Itinerary melds black and death metal with symphonic, industrial and electronic elements, plus inspiration from Paulo Coelho’s best-selling novel The Alchemist.
The band’s latest single from The Regeneration Itinerary pushes them into further uncharted territory. With its relentless riffs, soaring orchestration and maze-like song structure, “Prophetical Mercury Implement” dives deep into the album’s overarching themes of transformation, duality and rebirth.
The Regeneration Itinerarycomes out May 23rd on Season of Mist.
Pre-order & Pre-save https://orcd.co/andoceanstheregenerationitinerary
On “Prophetical Mercury Implement”, …and Oceans encapsulate the full metal alchemy of The Regeneration Itinerary. The band’s latest single draws upon the volatile yet transformative properties of mercury. Vocalist Mathias Lillmåns dissolves into reflective waters, where self-awareness and annihilation become indistinguishable.
“Now, I am the medium / I am the stream…
Drowning in argent colors / This vast bottomless ocean.”
“Prophetical Mercury Implement” is the turning point in the album’s narrative. It embodies the struggle between light and darkness, stagnation and progress, fate and free will.
“‘The Prophetical Mercury Implement’ is an existential realization”, Lillmåns says. “I was exploring some very deep waters at some point, I could see the mercury dripping from my side, but still wanted more, searching for new dangerous currents to take me further.
“I just kept on feeding the destruction until one day I had reached some kind of a threshold. Even though this track is a view from a vast bottomless depth it also offers a glimpse of the other side, a promise of redemption and transcendence.”
Weaving between chaotic black metal and dreamlike passages, “Prophetical Mercury Implement” surges forth as a towering demonstration of how …and Oceans continue to evolve amidst the landscape of symphonic black metal.
The video for “Prophetical Mercury Implement” 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) [WATCH]
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)
Nem Agency: Aki (aki@nem.fi)
Available Formats:
Digital Download
CD Digipak
CD Clamshell – Special Collector’s Box
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
