Photo by Jiawei Zhang
For celebrated post metal pillars The Ocean, the band's 12th and most recent full length studio album is triumph in more ways than one.
The arrival of Solaris serves as significant achievement for a band having already tallied 25 years of accolades. From 2022 to 2025, The Ocean floundered, losing two-thirds of their existing line-up. Asserting a special kind of determination and resilience, co-founder, guitarist and primary songwriter Robin Staps along with the remaining members in bassist Mattias Hägerstrand and drummer Jordi Farré - found a new creative focus and began a new era of the band that could arguably be presented as their best yet.
Strengthened by vocalists Lane Shi and Enrico Tiberi along with Emmanuel Jessua of Hypno5e and Marco Gennaro on guitars, a rejuvenated version of the collective emerged, stronger and creatively succinct - a significant achievement for a outfit that was previously on the ropes. Inspired by the cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky and the 1972 sci-fi classic Solaris, the band constructed an expansive post-metal soundtrack of interstellar escapism - an album that pairs expert musicality with consuming, compelling narrative.
Pulling back the curtain and providing some first-hand perspective to the thematic weight of such a pivotal album, The Ocean's architect Robin Staps has submitted a track-by-track account of Solaris. Treating each track on the album like chapters in a book, the narrative framework sources classic sci-fi for a presentation that ambitiously bridges the unknown interstellar frontier with the full emotional spectrum of the human condition - heavy in both style and scope.
_____
"52°30'11" N, 13°26’12“ E"
ROBIN STAPS - The album begins and ends with coordinates, and with the same sounds of a celesta. When listened to on repeat, the record becomes a continuous loop, with no discernible beginning or end. A circular journey, much like the recurring patterns of human history, or the thoughts and memories we find ourselves returning to: eternal recurrence.
The coordinates of the opening track are Berlin, Kreuzberg. This is where this new chapter as a band began for us, where our individual paths converged, and where we recorded the album. Within the narrative of Solaris, this represents our home port: the point of departure for a journey into the unknown.
Our previous album, Holocene, ended with "Subatlantic", a track depicting a dystopian vision of Earth, devastated by environmental catastrophe and climate change, rendered uninhabitable for humans and animals alike. In this imagined future, survival depends on our ability to create artificial worlds capable of sustaining life under conditions resembling those that we have destroyed on earth.
There is a profound paradox at the heart of this idea. Human intelligence is the driving force behind technological progress, yet that very progress has brought us to the brink of self-destruction. As rational beings, we possess both the means to prevent our own extinction and the capacity to bring it about.
One of the final lines of "Subatlantic" is "Prepare for departure." Solaris tells the story of this departure: an act of cosmic escapism, a voyage into the unknown aboard what is essentially a celestial lifeboat, leaving behind a metaphorically sinking Mother Earth. In the narrative of the album, we imagine this vessel less as a futuristic spaceship and more like an old maritime expedition ship, evoking the great voyages of exploration from centuries past. Alongside Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film, the album draws on the stories of historical navigators such as Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan and Sir Francis Drake, who sailed beyond the known world ito discover uncharted territories.
"Departure Song"
RS - "Departure Song" is a farewell letter to a loved one left behind as we leave Earth for good. With an uncertain future ahead of us, we find ourselves looking back at the moments we've shared. It is a final goodbye, but also an attempt to hold on to something that is already slipping away.
Space is the ultimate expression of loneliness. Life confined to a small capsule, suspended in an endless void. In the face of such absolute isolation, our memories become a refuge, and we begin to romanticise the world we've left behind in ruins.
Many scenes in Tarkovsky's Solaris revolve around nostalgic memories of life on Earth. There's a scene when the cosmonauts attach strips of paper to the air vents of their space station, recreating the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind. It's a profoundly human gesture: the smallest, most ordinary things often become the ones we miss the most. Sometimes we only realise their significance once they're gone.
The Book of Solaris, accompanying the vinyl and CD editions, includes six personal "Departure Song" letters, one written by each band member in their native language: Italian, Swedish, Catalan, French, German and Chinese.
"Light Pollution"
RS - Our cosmic lifeboat is now orbiting above the ocean of Solaris. In Andrei Tarkovsky's film, this ocean is a mysterious, intelligent entity that acts as a mirror to the deepest corners of the human psyche, confronting those who approach it with their memories, fears and unresolved traumas. The lyrics refer to the strange patterns observed on its surface by the scientists studying Solaris:
"Orbital motion
of particles and grains of sand
is there any meaning in these patterns?“
Orbital motion describes a circular or elliptical trajectory, whether of celestial bodies held in orbit by gravity or of water particles moving beneath passing waves. In both cases, there is constant movement without necessarily moving forward.
This becomes a metaphor for the pitfalls of 21st-century technology. Have the countless revolutions in communication, and our growing obsession with simulated realities, truly brought us closer together? We have more ways to connect than ever before, but have we actually become better at understanding one another? Are we moving forward, or merely going in circles, in orbital motion?
The term "Light Pollution" also captures the relentless transparency of the postmodern age which permeates everything and everyone. Everything is always visible, at all times. We’ve lost the darkness to retreat into, and we’ve lost our privacy in the constant glare of communication.
"Simulacra"
RS - "We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.“
— Solaris (§6:72), 1970 English translation
Hovering above the ocean Solaris, the characters in the film are confronted with what could be interpreted as simulacra: appearances without resemblance in reality. The term „Simulacra“ refers to the postmodern philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Jean Baudrillard, particularly Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality: a world in which simulations and representations increasingly replace real experience. We create artificial worlds of spectacle and seduction, seeking stimulation in experiences that become increasingly detached from real emotional engagement.
"These images without resemblance
in real life, mere simulations
become truth, exist in their own right:
Endless reproductions of fundamentally empty appearance
a transient simulacrum of reality“
The danger in the pursuit of stimulation and seduction emerges not in the lack of meaning but, as Baudrillard says (also quoted in the lyrics of Simulacra):
"we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.“
We live in a world so saturated with information, interpretations, symbols, and messages that meaning itself begins to lose its significance. And while we're constantly searching for meaning in everything we do and pursue, we seem to overlook the paradox that an excess of meaning can become just as suffocating as its absence.
"Belligerence"
RS - It is night aboard our cosmic lifeboat, high above the southern hemisphere. The ocean of Solaris is restless, boiling and churning, as we delve into our own past, reflecting on relationships, conflicts and struggles that have left their scars. This song explores the destructive force of suppressed anger and belligerence as a character trait, often transfigured by those who possess it as an expression of reason or critical thinking.
The history of exploration is filled with stories of storms, disease, shipwrecks, personal rivalries, power struggles and mutiny. While curiosity and the desire for discovery may have inspired many of these voyages, their legacies are often overshadowed by cultural imperialism, violence, genocide and authoritarian leadership.
This raises uncomfortable questions about the psychological foundations of the exploratory mindset. Exploration requires determination, an urge to push boundaries and venture into the unknown. As artists, we naturally identify with this spirit. Curiosity is at the heart of everything we do.
But where does this curiosity come from, and where does it lead? Is there an inherent thirst for power hidden beneath the seemingly innocent desire to discover? The German word for curiosity, Neugier, contains the word Gier — greed. Literally, a greed for something new. Could curiosity itself be a form of greed? And might this explain why so many historical voyages of discovery ultimately turned into acts of domination?
Perhaps we need to rethink what exploration means, and what it can achieve. Could it become an act of silent observation, documentation and learning, rather than an attempt to impose our own beliefs and values on others?
The lyrics return to the imagery of Solaris, quoting a description of the ocean's unsettling transformations:
"Then everything began
to crack and break.
Yellow sludge poured out of the fissures.
Everything began to boil even harder,
and foam appeared.
You can see for yourselves.“
"Ultima Esperanza"
RS - "Ultima Esperanza" (Spanish for "last hope") is a province in southern Chile, named after the Última Esperanza Sound. The inlet was given its name by a Spanish navigator who believed it might be his last chance to reach the Strait of Magellan. Instead, it led to a dead end, near a glacier. It is a story of how last hope turned into lost hope.
We consider "Ultima Esperanza", "Milk of My Dreams" and the closing coordinates track to be one continuous, 21-minute piece of music. This final chapter of the album is a tribute to the profoundly human capacity for hope: the ability to envision a better future, even when the present gives us little reason to believe in one.
The song goes through different stages of losing hope, and the mental resilience required to endure them. There is something remarkable about the human mind's ability to keep projecting hope into the future, even in the most desperate circumstances, when all reason suggests that hope is futile. Perhaps this is one of our most fundamental survival instincts.
Hope is also the driving force behind all explorative endeavours, and the pursuit of utopia. Exploration was always a matter of pushing for frontiers, driven by the belief that something might lie beyond the horizon. Ultima Esperanza represents the classic historic frontier, at a time when there were still frontiers to be found on earth. Today, the last square inch of the globe has been mapped, photographed and explored, and the only frontiers that remain are the deep ocean, and space.
"Milk Of My Dreams"
RS - … but is hope really the source of mental strength and the driving force behind our pursuit of the unknown, or can it also be a form of self-deception? And are we perhaps deceiving ourselves when we claim to be driven by a genuine desire to explore?
In Tarkovsky's Solaris, the scientist Snaut questions humanity's true motives for exploring the universe. He suggests that we are not genuinely seeking encounters with the unknown, but rather reflections of ourselves: other worlds that reaffirm our own beliefs, desires and understanding. We already quoted these words in "Simulacra":
"We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors."
And perhaps this is where the real journey begins: not with the discovery of another world, but with the unsettling realisation that wherever we go, we bring ourselves along.
"Milk Of My Dreams" is also a tribute to David Bowie's "Space Oddity"
"For here, am I sitting in a tin can
Far, above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there's nothing I can do“
Our own lyrics echo this:
"Here I am floating in the milk of my dreams
Here I am floating far above the world
The cosmos is an ocean
If you let yourself sink, you'll sink to the ground“
Like so many historical voyages of exploration, our journey ends in wreckage. "Space Oddity" has often been interpreted as a reflection on the fading utopian dreams of the 1960s, when the promise of a different future gradually gave way to political disillusionment.
A similar sense of hopelessness lingers in the aftermath of our own failed voyage. What remains when the last utopias have crumbled, when the promise of escape reveals itself as an illusion, and we find ourselves right back where we started?
"51°28′30″S, 73°6′11″W"
RS - The coordinates of the closing track are Última Esperanza Sound in Patagonia, where our journey to Solaris and back comes to an end: back on earth. The album returns to the same celesta sounds, played in the same key and tempo as at the very beginning of the record.
Solaris was recorded at Berlin's Hansa Studios, where David Bowie recorded parts of his Berlin Trilogy (though not "Space Oddity").
Full circle. Rewind.
_____
Solaris, the 12th studio album from The Ocean is now available via Pelagic Records - HERE
