Album Reviews

Being As An Ocean… what does that even mean? Being As An Ocean and wave? Anyway, these guys are back with the follow-up to “Dear G-d”. The new album is called “How We Both Wondrously Perish”, which isn’t even the worst name if you look at some of the song titles. Personally, I feel that “Death’s Great Black Wing Scrapes The Air” takes the cake. I think we can agree on the fact that naming things isn’t their strong suit, something they seem to realize as well because they named the first song “Mediocre Shakespeare”.

On to the music then… Being As An Ocean does the whole post-hardcore thing a la Alexisonfire with both screams and clean vocals and then added some rather subtle electronics. Check out the opening track… it serves as a fine example of what’s to come as it starts off with a drone before the harsh vocals kick in with the rest of the band with the clean vocals swooping in for the chorus. There are some spoken word parts strewn throughout the album as well, further adding to the vocal diversity. Meanwhile, the guitars are crashing and spiraling and doing lots of things while the rhythm section delivers a sturdy basis.

It’s not that the songs are bad but this has been done so many times before, that it just feels bland. Being As An Ocean don’t have anything new to add to the genre or it would have to be the rather pointless ambient interludes. No wait, that’s probably been done before as well.

Oh and guys, if you want to use a fancy French song title, you might want to make sure there are no typos in it!