Oceans Of Sadness - Belgian Metal Madness

Oceans of Sadness from Belgium, started back in 1995 and at first drew inspiration from bands such as Type O Negative, Amorphis and Paradise Lost. Within five months of starting the band the first demo "Forgotten Symphony I" got released and this tape immediately became the "demo of the month" in Aardschok – the professional music journal of the Netherlands. At the time, the main ambition was to create slow atmospheric and ultra deep songs – much like those of the bands that inspired Oceans of Sadness. But the songs already had a face of their own and a recognizable sound that you still can identify in the more recent works. In 1999 the young act surprised everyone by winning the Metal Bash Award – a talent competition for Belgian and Dutch bands, organized by Aardschok – which very much helped the band to a larger audience with performances on Dynamo Open Air, "Aardschokdag" and on Biebob Metalfest amongst others. Two years and some demo’s later Oceans Of Sadness signed a two-album-deal with Belgian LSP records and soon after that the debut album "For We Are" was released. Graspop Metal Meeting noticed the intense live presentation of the band, and invited Oceans Of Sadness for the first time on their esteemed festival.

Second album, "Laughing Tears, Crying Smile" was released in 2002, bringing the band to quite a higher level of musicianship. The album got good reviews worldwide but distribution failed as it was only released in Belgium and the Netherlands. In support of their second album the band opened up for Within Temptation and Dimmu Borgir and played lots of shows all over Belgium and The Netherlands. With this album the band also released their first video for a song called “So Close” and it got played on several networks in Europe like TMF and MTV2.

The third album, called "Send In The Clowns", was recorded and released in 2004 by Apache Productions. "Clowns" was a bright musical epos, full of different genres varying from non-metal (classical, jazz, flamenco) over the very best out of the different metal genres (death, black). The album was received very well and the band teamed up with Epica, the orchestral Dutch band, as they joined them on tour in Portugal and Spain. Sadly enough Tijs (vocals) suffered from a collapsing lung twice in a short period of time and the band was forced to slow things down a bit until he was recovered and back for action. Meanwhile the band never stopped writing songs and working on their act.

In 2006 Oceans of Sadness came in contact with producer Jens Bogren (Opeth, Katatonia, Amon Amarth) of Fascination Street Studios in Sweden. Once the upcoming album "Mirror Palace” was recorded at the Motormusic Studio (Lint, BE) the band went to Sweden where the album was mixed by Jens. The band signed a worldwide deal with Scarlet Records who released the album in April 2007. This album takes a couple more steps on the experimental path that Oceans of Sadness has been on for quite some time and the end result is just as interesting to fans of extreme metal such as Cradle of Filth and Opeth as it is to fans of more melodic rock acts like System of a Down or Alice in Chains. The album got raving reviews all over and it even made it into several list for ‘best album of 2007’. The band recorded another video to promote this album and focussed entirely on the internet with this video and was posted on many websites and forums. The amazing result was that it got watched over a 100000 times up to date! The band was again invited for the Graspop Metal Meeting (for the 4th time!) where they headlined the Metal Dome Stage on the main day of the fest. The band also did their first tour in Italy and did many shows in The Netherlands as well as their home country Belgium.

After the “MP” album things started rolling for the band and they got more focussed but also relaxed than ever. They immediately started writing new songs and merely a year after they released “MP” they again flew to Sweden, this time to work on a full “Jens Bogren-production” at Fascination Street. As the band has always been about making dreams come true they decided to invite some guests: their “long-time” idol Johan Liiva (ex-Arch Enemy, Hearse) and Annlouice Loegdlund, vocalist of a befriended Swedish band Diablo Swing Orchestra. Anders Nordström, Jens’s partner at the studio and by this time a close friend of the band also joined in on a song. The album got the prestigious name “The Arrogance Of Ignorance” and the band invited the Greek artist Seth Siro (Paradise Lost, Oceansize, Moonspell) to handle the artwork as the band only wanted the best for this release on each level. Lyrically the album is about questioning things in life and the difficult quest of finding your own opinion. Nothing can be taken for granted as all is in the hands of nature and we can only do what we think that is best.

“The Arrogance Of Ignorance”, released late September 2008 by Scarlet Records, clearly is the synthesis of years of hard work and fine-tuning the sound of Oceans Of Sadness and if the press had difficulties with labelling their music in the past... well... prepare for this diverse metal madness, it might even set some new standards in metal music. Listen to this album as you would taste a fine wine... take your time and focus on every aspect of what you hear. Experience how these songs become richer with each listening until they are like a second skin.