Year: 2021
Total Time: 47.07
Label: Season Of Mist

Finnish Industrial (extreme) Metallers …AND OCEANS, have decided to reissue their legendary albums “Am God” and “Cypher” via Season of Mist. These albums had seen the light of day in 2001 and 2002 respectively, via Century Media records. I remember the band from the split album with HAVOC UNIT (basically their alter ego) and THE SINN: DECAY, on the cult label Vendlus. Season of Mist is their current label, as last year they released “Cosmic World Mother”, returning to their Death/Black Metal roots, an album completely different from the two mentioned above.

So what is actually “Cypher”? It is a huge record for the genre of Industrial Extreme Metal with fresh sound, very good production, awesome ideas and…..trust me, you cannot believe that it was released 19 years ago! Their influences are definitely by THE KOVENANT’s “Animatronic” and “S.E.T.I” , PAIN and DEATHSTARS. But if you want my opinion, this album is better than anything released by the three aforementioned bands. …AND OCEANS have the perfect combination between guitars and electronics sounds, and very good harsh vocals. All tracks are on the same high level but I would single out “Melting Skies”, “Chthonian Earth”, “In White Rooms” and the experimental “Lost between Horizons”. I highly recommend this album and in fact the vinyl version, which apart from being in gatefold with all the lyrics, contains also a two-page inlay with the band’s memories from that time and rich photographic material!

Rating: N/A
Editor: Dimitris Argyrakis
Related Link: AND OCEANS – Facebook Page