| The dark cinematic metal band’s new single defies any and all conventions |
| “One of modern metal’s brightest hopes” – Metal Hammer |
Though revered by critics and peers, OCEANS OF SLUMBER bow to no one. For more than a decade, the Houston band have spurred prevailing trends in both the metal scene and the American South. Instead of adhering to conventional wisdom or slapping a new coat of paint on the same old ideas, they’ve remade the Southern Gothic in their own progressive image, casting tales of hope and despair against an ever-shifting backdrop of melodic death, doom and black metal.
While they’ve always been stars in their own right, Oceans of Slumber’s upcoming sixth album expands the band’s wide-ranging vision to the dark, cinematic heights of a Hollywood blockbuster. Where Gods Fear to Speak is in conversation with The Handmaid’s Tale and Cormac McCarthy more than it is Opeth. Their new single “The Given Dream” gives hope to the future of metal by breaking the spell that’s lorded over us by the powers that be.
Where Gods Fear to Speak comes out September 13 on Season of Mist.
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“The Given Dream” awakens with a familiar sense of dread. A dark, ominous synth blares over the speakers with the creeping suspense of an IMAX movie.
“We were watching a lot of dystopian sci-fi films and TV shows”, Dobber Beverly says about the inspiration behind Where Gods Fear to Speak. The underground will always recognize Dobber as the drummer for grindcore legends Insect Warfare, but he’s also a classically training pianist who composed every note on the album. “I had just bought a Le Gibet synthesizer” he continues. “Hearing the big stabbing synth lines that are in a lot of those soundtracks gave me the idea to open ‘The Given Dream’ as if an alarm was going off in the listener’s head”.
On the album’s first official single, Oceans of Slumber zoomed in on the doomed romance that’s at the center of Where Gods Fear to Speak. While it immediately follows “Poem of Ecstasy” on the track list, “The Given Dream” pans out to the big picture themes that were teased by its title track. “The cold and bitter taste / The wall in front of you / The stone with all your hopes”, belts the band’s leading lady Cammie Beverly, reaching down into the smoky pit of her soul.
“We’re pre-programmed with this dream of how our lives are supposed to turn out”, Dobber says. “The white picket fence. A career at the tech company down the road. Two and a half kids to go along with the ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ poster on your wall”.
“Buying into that idea will make you feel like you’re on the right track”, says Cammie. “When really, we’re just blinded. That dream doesn’t exist”.
The faraway glimmer of the song’s gorgeous piano melody is one of the most intoxicating lines on Where Gods Fear to Speak. “If you’re lucky enough to come from a higher standing, then maybe you do get to live out that fantasy”, Dobber says. He’s not blasting “The Given Dream” — at least, not on his kit. The song is afforded one of the sparest, most streamlined arrangements on the album. A thumping back beat sets a workmanlike pace, but the syncopated snare crumbles like hope through your fingers amidst a glitch of digital effects. “But if you’ve got to struggle, then it’s a lot harder just to survive”.
“You stare and you stare” Cammie belts, steeling herself between each word before she bangs her head back against the proverbial wall. She’s always possessed one of the strongest voices in metal, but on “The Given Dream”, it sounds like she’s fighting for air. “It’s still empty”.
In reality, Cammie did have to catch her breath in order to nail down “The Given Dream”. Oceans of Slumber recorded Where Gods Fear to Speak in Bogotá, Colombia, which is a cool 8,000 feet above sea level. “‘This is one of the most tiring songs to sing on the album”, she explains. “I’m belting from the beginning”. When the bottom finally does drop out and the song sinks into a bridge that’s as quiet and full of shadows as the ocean floor, it only seems like she’s taking a breather. “Going from a belt to soprano back to a belt is not a break” she says with a knowing smile. “Singing soprano takes more breath than singing mid-range or alto. You have to hold your vocal cords tight”.
Just like the myth of suburbia, the music industry doesn’t always live up to its own hype. Heck, even a genre that’s as hellbent on setting fire to the status quo as extreme metal is no angel when it comes to favoring style over substance. With six albums and a decade of touring under their belt, Oceans of Slumber have nothing left that they need to prove, but the band’s unwavering authenticity continues to set them apart. All ten songs on Where Gods Fear to Speak were tracked live with GRAMMY-nominated producer Joel Hamilton. Even the digital drum loops on “The Given Dream” were hammered out by hand.
“I played those loops myself in real time, all one take” Dobber says. “I actually like Portishead, Sneaker Pimps and all those other trip-hop bands from the ’90s. With this song, I wanted to remake that dub style with a big heavy part at the end”.
If their haunting reflection on “Wicked Game” is the chilling end credits to Where Gods Fear to Speak, then “The Given Dream” is one of its many climactic turning points. When the riffs finally come crashing down during the song’s grand finale, it’s with all the gloom and doom of a raging tempest. “I return to the dust I’ve known / The circle, the sky / The earth I’ve called home”, Cammie sings with all her might. With this much force, Oceans of Slumber sound like they’re ready to tear down the walls and show us into the light.
To celebrate the release of Where Gods Fear to Speak, Oceans of Slumber are saddling up with their fellow Houston heavies in Necrofier for a fiery performance at Metal Injection Festival.
“We are thrilled to celebrate Metal Injection’s 20th anniversary at this year’s festival”, says Cammie. “We’ll be sharing the stage with amazing bands like Jinjer, Converge, God Forbid, 3 Inches of Blood, Hanabie, Cave In, Rivers of Nihil and our good friends in Necrofier. We can’t wait to rock out with you and hit the streets of New York City”.
Metal Injection Festival
Sunday, September 22 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Monarch & Meadows [TICKETS]
Tracklist
1. Where Gods Fear to Speak (6:25) [WATCH]
2. Run From the Light (5:15)
3. Don’t Come Back From Hell Empty Handed (8:28)
4. Wish (3:53)
5. Poem of Ecstasy (6:33) [WATCH]
6. The Given Dream (3:36) [LISTEN]
7. I Will Break the Pride of Your Will (5:27)
8. Prayer (5:03)
9. The Impermanence of Fate (6:20)
10. Wicked Game (5:26) [LISTEN]
More praise for Oceans of Slumber
“A band that nails a unique balance and has the potential to do whatever they want” – Angry Metal Guy (4/5)
“Masterful compositions that reveal more secrets with each listen” – Metal Injection (9/10)
“Dark, turbulent, and above all, incredibly emotional” – New Noise (4/5)
“They are the new Southern gothic, and you need to pay attention” – Distorted Sound (9/10)
“This band is truly something special” – Ghost Cult (8/10)
More than a decade has passed since the release of Oceans of Slumber’s Aetherial debut album, and a lot has changed. After recruiting Cammie Gilbert (now Beverly) in 2014, the Houston, Texas crew’s trajectory took a natural, upward tilt, fueled by the hugely positive response received by second album, Winter (2016). Masters of dark-hearted brutality and gritty, melancholic song craft, Oceans of Slumber transcended the usual genre limitations, favoring a progressive and boundary-less approach. With each successive record, the combination of founder, drummer, pianist and chief songwriter Dobber Beverly’s brooding, dynamic onslaughts with Cammie’s charismatic presence and elegant, sonorous vocals garnered widespread acclaim and an international fan base. Monuments to a restless creative spirit, the band’s third and fourth albums, The Banished Heart (2018) and Oceans of Slumber (2020) raised the stakes ever higher.
Nobody said it was going to be easy, however. Buoyed by the praise of critics and the love of increasingly rabid admirers, Oceans of Slumber proved true to their progressive reputation when they released fifth full-length Starlight & Ash in 2022. Although still palpably drawn from the same well of dark and daring influences that had informed previous records, the new songs were pointedly bereft of the crushing metal tropes and elaborate song structures of old. Instead, Oceans of Slumber stripped things to an ornate and earthy take on gothically-inclined songwriting and melancholy modern prog. Starlight & Ash was praised in metal and prog media, but drew the ire of the band’s big label paymasters, who were rather unimaginatively hoping for more of the same. Reaching an impasse, band and label parted ways, leading to Oceans of Slumber’s newly-forged relationship with the notoriously open-minded Season of Mist. Now armed with a brand new studio album, Where Gods Fear To Speak, these intuitive radicals have gone where they will be understood.
“The thing is, we never said we’re never going to do something heavy again,” shrugs Cammie. “People panic when a band puts out an album that does something different. It was a weird time. It came during a time when our music was different from everything else, and I think the record was a bit lost on some people – people that mattered in our realm. The fans got it, and it was received really well, just not by the label!”
“Starlight should’ve been an easier way for us to branch out to a different audience,” adds Dobber. “But the label didn’t care and we didn’t try to capitalize on it. With Where Gods Fear To Speak, every time you make a new record, you think it’s the best, but there’s a couple of songs on this record that are definitely the best songs we’ve ever written, easily. There’s an energy to them that’s palpable. It sounds like an energetic, pissed-off band, with enigmatic storytelling and all those magical things.”
Recorded in Bogota, Colombia, in 2023, Where Gods Fear To Speak is a multi-faceted entry into Oceans of Slumber’s burgeoning legacy. Many of the melodic and textural elements that made Starlight & Ash such a revelation are still present, but scabrous brutality and complex, cultured arrangements are back with a vengeance. With Cammie’s astonishing vocal blend of vulnerability and abominable power, these songs are the best possible showcase for a band on an unerring mission to win the world over.
“I think Cammie is the best singer in America by far, but if she’s at such a top level and we still can’t break through, that just means that if we want to stay where we are, we’ve got to work harder!” Dobber admits, candidly. “We know how good we are, and how good the music is, but it doesn’t pay off for us all the time and the new record reflects that. It’s aggressive, it’s aggravated, but it tells a story. The closing song, “Impermanence Of Fate” – that’s the tag. It means that what you have it isn’t a fatal flaw or a mortal wound, and you can change things and work around these setbacks. So a lot of this record is fight songs.”
A colossus in both conception and execution, Where Gods Fear To Speak eschews the usual modern metal sounds in favor of an overwhelming, wall-of-sound production. As songs like the thunderous title track and the grim and sprawling “Don’t Come Back From Hell Empty Handed” cast their meandering, malevolent spells, every instrument leaps out with laser-like clarity, and the vast, emotional heft underpinning Dobber and Cammie’s lyrics is brought rivetingly to the fore. Meanwhile, standout gems like “The Given Dream” and “Poem of Ecstasy” showcase Oceans of Slumber’s still-evolving core sound, with soaring melodies and jaw-dropping dynamics that casually blur the boundary between the accessible and the avant-garde, while basking in the brooding glow of Cammie’s unique voice. Produced in collaboration with esteemed studio guru Joel Hamilton at Audovision Studios in Bogota, it emerges as a self-evident labor of love for all of those involved.
“We did the most extensive pre-production demoing that we’ve ever done for this record. Everything was finished, the vocal lines were 98% done in advance,” Dobber notes. “Then we got into the studio and I threw curveballs at Cammie to piss her off and get her to land these certain vocal sections. There has to be some element of this that is created in the moment. It’s not magical otherwise. I did all the synthesizers and orchestrations at home, but then we recorded the rest of it at the studio in Colombia. Joel’s done a lot of work with big hitters, but also with Neurosis and bands like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum. So when I said we were going to make a heavy record, I wanted it to sound like all hell’s breaking loose. We wanted a very natural production and for everything to be as organic as it could be.”
From the doom-laden opening chords of “Where Gods Fear To Speak” – released as the album’s first preview single, and revealing Cammie’s feral death growls for the first time – to the dying, desolate embers of grand finale “Impermanence Of Fate”, the new Oceans of Slumber album is simply the most immersive and fascinating piece of work the band have made. As added intrigue, guest stars Mikael Stanne of Swedish melo-death legends Dark Tranquillity, and Moonspell’s iconic frontman Fernando Ribeiro lend their vocal talents to “Run From The Light” and “Prayer” respectively. Steeped in the oppressive atmospheres of doom, death and gothic metal, but rendered using a spinning kaleidoscope of progressive musical shades, Where The Gods Fear To Speak idly defies categorization, while strenuously redefining the artistic formula that Oceans of Slumber have spent so many years refining. Meanwhile, these songs paint such vivid pictures that it comes as little surprise that Where Gods Fear to Speak is a certified concept work, with a cinematic streak a mile wide.
“This album is a dystopian western or a post-apocalyptic survival movie, somewhere between The Handmaid’s Tale, The Dark Tower and Cormac McCarthy,” states Dobber. “The whole idea is that Where The Gods Fear To Speak is a movie, and we’ve written the soundtrack. If the world was taken over, like in movie The Book Of Eli, and Gary Oldman had found the Bible and the true power of it, and he was wielding the power of the lord over everybody, those people that were maybe just into their traditional spiritualism or people that were not religious at all, they would be the defectors, so the record is written from the viewpoint of the defectors. The ending credits are our version of “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak. We wanted to take it back to when the music in movies set the tone for everything.”
Wildly evocative and bulging under the weight of its countless razor-sharp melodies, Where Gods Fear To Speak proves that Oceans of Slumber will not let the occasional setback put them off their creative stride. Both the heaviest and the most sophisticated record they have made yet, it covers all bases to deliver an emotional, life-affirming musical journey like no other. Some people will love it. Others may not. But what is abundantly clear is that Oceans of Slumber remain a formidable force to be reckoned with, and When Gods Fear To Speak may be their masterpiece.
“We just hope to grow the band. We’ve had a problem with reaching the next level, but I’m hoping this record makes the difference, and people just give us a shot,” Dobber concludes. “The band is great and it’s tight, and Cammie is such a great performer. When people really get to see the real thing in front of them, which they don’t a lot of the time, it just works, intrinsically. There’s just a natural response to it. So if we can get in front of the audiences we should, then we’ll win them over and the band will grow. That’s all we want. It’s a mechanism for survival at this point.”
Lineup
Cammie Beverly – vocals
Dobber Beverly- drums, piano
Semir Ozerkan – bass
Alex Davis – guitar
Chris Kritikos – guitar, synth
Recording
Audiovision Studios in Bogotá, Columbia
Assistant engineering at Audiovision by Deyra Castillo and David Dueñas Piña
Production
Produced and engineered by Joel Hamilton
Mixed by Joel Hamilton at Studio G in Brooklyn, New York
Additional engineering by Chris Kritikos
Assistant engineering by Justin Termotto
Artwork
Giannis Nakos – Remedy Art Design
Biography:
Dom Lawson
Follow Oceans of Slumber:
Website: https://oceansofslumber.com/
Bandcamp: https://oceansofslumber.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/oceansofslumber/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oceansofslumber/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/oceansofslumber
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/2JSza6IRxLr1Ez3wqKd0SY
Pre-order & Pre-save:
https://orcd.co/oceansofslumberwheregodsfeartospeakalbum
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