Oceansize - Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up

This is probably the toughest choice I’ve made so far. So many other albums deserve to occupy the last spot on our Albums of the Year list. I know it, and so do you, but I can think of no album more deserving of finishing our advent calendar than this one; and so I present the final accolade of 2010 to a surprisingly understated yet wonderfully expansive record.

Oceansize, best known for tipping over into progressive metal more often than not, scaled things back considerably for their fourth album, ‘Self Preserved While The Bodies Float Up’, which was as dramatic a shift in sound as I heard all year. This time around, the focus was more on the group’s gentler side.

Well, actually it was more on ‘Oscar Acceptance Speech’ than anything else, a truly jaw-dropping epic that ranks up there with their very best material, but the song took nothing away from those that surrounded it, as tracks like ‘Silent/Transparent’, ‘Pine’ and ‘SuperImposter’ showed.

When they needed to rock out, however, they certainly did: ‘Part Cardiac’ can be best described as ‘brutal’; to say nothing of the breakneck pace of ‘It’s My Tail And I’ll Chase It If I Want To’ and the mini-epic tendencies of ‘Build Us A Rocket Then…’ ‘Self Preserved…’ saw Oceansize stepping out into brave new territory, reinventing themselves in a way that was both intensely intimate and grandiose: a perfect combination. [GO’M]

Audiovisuals: SuperImposer