Rating: 9/10
Genre: Alt-Rock/Prog Rock
Like most Oceansize fans I was more than a little worried when they announced that their fourth album would be made up of shorter songs. Oceansize, for the uninitiated, on the whole produce long complicated and proggy rock songs that fuse complex time signatures and powerful guitar crescendos with sparse post-rock soundscapes. Oceansize managed to achieve a strong cult following similar to many of their peers (e.g. Biffy Clyro) and many of the bands peers have since folded under the pressure that the music industry put on them whilst others commercialised to ensure their survival. So when the manchester quintet stated the new album was going to made up of shorter songs alarm bells began to ring.
These initial fears and doubts are instantly put to bed as soon as "Part Cardiac" pummels your ears with its slow lumbering sludgey opening riff. Then the penny drops, shorter songs doesn't always mean compromise. Oceansize have rarely sounded as heavy as they do here on Self Preserved... leading many to claim this as their heaviest album to date. In reality however this album fits in with one of the most cliched claims a band can make: "The heavy bits are heavier, the soft bits are softer". It seems that many of the lessons learnt from their last EP Home and Minor come into play on softer tracks like "A Penny's Weight" and "Pine". Keyboards and reverb sync with Mike Vennart's soft vocals beautifully making the softer songs welcome rests from the otherwise unrelenting bass heavy riffing. Even after vowing to shorter tracks they still treat the listener to two sprawling masterpieces that nearly hit the ten minute mark in the form of "Oscar Acceptance Speech" and "Silent/Transparent". The other tracks as suggested are fast heavy and driven by the amazing rythm section with Mark Heron's insane drumming underpinning the whole record nicely.
Highlights include the slow building majesty of "Oscar Acceptance Speech" which ends in a beautifully icy string section reminiscent of Olafur Arnalds. The lightning fast "Build Us A Rocket Then..." and the unnerving ender "Superimposter" which slowly builds at an eerie pace towards a truly hair raising droning siren. Overall you'll be hard pushed to find a more robust release this year. This is Oceansize at the top of their game. Highly recommended.
Download: "Oscar Acceptance Speech" "Superimposter"
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