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With just under two weeks to go until Oddworld mavericks Ocean Grove unleash their fourth studio album ODDWORLD, there's undeniably some palpable excitement brewing for long-term fans, newcomers and/or fans who adore anything nu metal adjacent.
A spectacle for the senses from start to finish, ODDWORLD simultaneously feels like a home-coming and a total game-changer for Ocean Grove, with lashings of cohesion, nuance and electrifying delivery all lying in wait throughout the album.
With the performing OG members Sam Bassal, Twiggy Hunter and Dale Tanner once again joining forces with studio members Luke Holmes and Running Touch to level up this new album to astonishing new heights, Ocean Grove are primed to commence an insatiable new sonic chapter when ODDWORLD finally unveils to the world on Friday 22 November. But ahead of the album's release, vocalist Dale Tanner spent some time with Tiana Speter to dive behind the scenes making this phenomenal album; from rural getaways to full-circle moments, this is ODDWORLD's origin story.
ODDWORLD ASSEMBLED
With this album, we made a very active and intentional point of bringing what we are terming the “Oddworld Collective” together, bringing the band together in a way that we haven't been for almost 10 years. It’s the full members of the Oddworld Collective, Twiggy [Hunter], Sam [Bassal], and myself, plus studio members Matt Kopp, aka Running Touch, and Luke Holmes. With the two studio members I mentioned, it's not as though that they haven't been in the picture along the way; it's more that they've somewhat been in the background behind closed doors and contributing here and there where they can, whilst their lives have been happening, and their own careers. All of that’s been happening whilst Sam, Twiggy and myself have been forging forward in the public arena, in live sense and so forth.
With this album, it was the first time that we decided that we needed to all get into a room together, not this separated, stagnated thing where only one or two of us are getting in the studio at a time, or only one of us is there one week and we are missing the other next week. We’re all trying to contribute to this thing, but it can happen that sometimes we're not all on that same wavelength because we're all just doing our own thing.
We did a post a while back, which obviously caused a lot of questions and anticipation of what exactly it meant, but we just wanted to show that the five people in that image - it's always been that, even though on stage and in music videos and things, it might not always look like that at the core of who we are. But that's us and that's the five people that are writing this album. And how we’ve written ODDWORLD, it's us five all contributing our own flavor into the mix, and there's no outside influence. It's just us five coming together and writing this album.
BACK TO BASICS
Making ODDWORLD was really nice, we booked an Airbnb for a week in regional Gippsland in Victoria. It was just a nice sort of farmhouse surrounded by rolling green hills, and there were no other houses around. We spent the better part of a week there, all five of us together. And it felt like we haven't had an experience like this in 10 years.
We started Ocean Grove in high school. We'd go to Matt's house on Beach Road just up the road from school at St. Bede’s in Mentone, and we'd go there as 16 year olds and hang out, muck around, listen to music and just be kids - and really enjoy each other's company first and foremost. It’s easy for that energy, and how important that is, to kind of get lost along the way as life gets in the way and things get more serious. So, returning to this farmhouse and being together, there was table tennis and there was a TV, but we barely even switched that on. We were either upstairs in our “make do” studio, or we were downstairs playing table tennis, mucking around, laughing or enjoying a meal together. And as simple as it is, I think that was really such an important moment in the creation of this album because it was us actively capturing the essence of Ocean Grove, which is what we wanted to do with the music ultimately.
It was a really beautiful moment to come together and it was a very efficient use of our time. We actually created and wrote a fair chunk of the album in that sitting. I sort of look at that and I think of moments, writing lyrics and recording parts to songs like LAST DANCE and STUNNER, and some of these songs that are so at the core of this album…it all stems back to moments at that farmhouse and being together, watching the sun go down, all of those kinds of things; this is what it's all about. It's just really beautiful that we got to have that. And it was also somewhat of a slightly different experience to what we're used to, which is being in Sam's house, wherever that might be in his home studio, and being bunkered down and not really getting a whole lot of sun! I think sunlight does a lot of good, it helps the mind and creativity.
RETURNING TO NU METAL ROOTS
This idea of returning to the roots of Ocean Grove and releasing this fully fledged nu metal album has been in the pipeline for a couple of years. As we were coming out of lockdown and writing and completing Up In The Air Forever, it really felt like that album was necessary to sort of close out that chapter of Ocean Grove, and to really give a brother/sister pairing to Flip Phone Fantasy.
Had we not written Up In The Air Forever, I probably would've left feeling quite dissatisfied with that exploration, of that idea as Ocean Grove and how far we could take this idea of a band starting in this sort of heavy hardcore world, how far can you push that and have fun with it. Up In The Air Forever was very much that. And I think it needed to just be its own thing. We couldn't really afford to blend these heavier nu metal elements into an album like that, which had its own sort of sound and vibe from start to finish. We wanted it to have that summery kind of anthem vibe from start to finish and be its own thing.
For ODDWORLD, we had songs like FLY AWAY ready for quite some time. But even though they were ready to go, we just knew that we had to commit to Up In The Air Forever at the time. But then the moment we were ready to do the follow-up album; now was the moment to pull the trigger, down tune the guitars and let the whole thing be just this nu metal, Oddworld, Ocean Grove, “back to the roots” kind of album. This hasn't just been some kind of overnight thing, it's been in the pipeline for a bit. And we do take a back step and view things from a wider lens with a lot of this stuff.
PLAYING THE LONG GAME
We write each album with an intention of it being enjoyed from start to finish, and for it to be a journey, not just a bunch of singles that are thrown together. And in an even broader sense, we want the discography to be enjoyed from start to finish and be its own journey too. I look back to The Rhapsody Tapes, you get all the way to the end and Hitachi is kind of this “riding off into the sunset” moment that leaves you going, “what did I just experience and where is this heading?”. And then the next thing you know, it’s the phone ringing and Flip Phone Fantasy starts, taking you into this more futuristic realm. It’s like how sequels in a movie can compliment the movie prior and then leave you guessing as to what's going to happen next. I really like to think that we apply that same sort of mentality when it comes to our albums. And this long form experience of music is somewhat synonymous with a film versus say a short film or something like that where you can't actually get everything out that you want to say in one sitting; and you can't actually have those peaks and troughs without it being in the form of an album.
In that sense, I'm really excited for people to hear this album, but I'm also excited for newcomers to go back and start from the beginning and listen to all four albums in sequence and just follow that journey. This album's very much a fourth chapter in that full-circle moment. It really feels like that neat conclusion to where we begin with The Rhapsody Tapes, then you come around and explore with Flip Phone Fantasy and Up In The Air Forever, and close out now with ODDWORLD; and for the latter, it’s in the title, it encapsulates everything that we were bringing to life with The Rhapsody Tapes. This term Oddworld and Oddworld Music began in that era, so it feels very fitting. We've introduced the idea already, we've been toying with it, it's found itself in lyrics along the way, and now we're finally delivering to you, at least in part, what Oddworld means and what Oddworld sounds like, what it represents.
It feels pretty perfect in my eyes. And even though this won't be the last thing that Ocean Grove does, we wanted to sort of pay tribute to that idea of: this is what Ocean Grove looks like when we are laying it all down on the line. If we could never write another album and we have one last chance to put out a package of music, this is what it would be. This is us putting our hearts on the line and putting everything that we've accumulated over our career and our lives and the wisdom and the experience and everything that has built up within us. We've tried to funnel as much of that as we possibly could into this album and translate that in a way that represents Ocean Grove and Oddworld to the very best of our ability. And I really hope we've done that. I trust and I believe that we have.
ODDWORLD AGAINST THE ODDS
The mental fortitude that it required of us to push past those temptations to give it all up and to just say, “ah, you know what we've tried” against some of the hurdles over the past few years…I know deep down that we all knew that the story for Ocean Grove wasn't over, and that there was more to this than we had explored. And that, for me, is a massive driving factor, it's always itching my brain. You never know what is around that corner. You just don't. And I love the fact that this album has so much more weight to it because of that preciousness; that it's so delicate, the fact that it so easily couldn't have happened.
It's not like you're a footy player in the peak of your career and then you've been presented with the moments to rise to the occasion on a grand final, and you win the grand final and it's like, “oh, well, yeah, that's great. It was probably bound to happen because everything was leading that way”. To be perfectly honest: the last few years have sucked. They've been really hard. By no means were we just ready to drop our best album. Everything was pitted against us, and we've had a lot of tough moments to evolve through and push through, things like member changes and lockdown, and just so many moments where we've been knocked back down just as we were starting to pick ourselves up again.
The fact that this album could easily have not ever happened, I think, gives so much more gravity to it, and it makes me even more proud that we actually stuck to our guns and stuck together and became more united than ever. That's the reason why we felt the need to bring this Oddworld Collective together and be brothers in this, find that friendship and that unity - because that's what had been stripped away. And we found that without that unity, it was like there was a void there. It wasn't a complete Ocean Grove without the Oddworld Collective, and this OG Collective being a united force. Once we brought that together and created this album, it was like, “wow!!”.
We are always going to write our best music when we're doing it together. When we're fragmented and we're trying to do our own thing and there's only a couple of people contributing, I think we can still make it great, but it's never going to be as strong as when all of us are there and on the same wavelength and contributing as one. And that's what this album is. It’s really cool in that sense that we had nothing to lose. It was just like: this is just our moment to be totally free and write the album that we want to write. What's the worst that could happen? Something other outside of our control? What’s the point in being that way, we've already had to deal with so much. And so we decided to take matters into our own hands. And the result is: ODDWORLD.
OCEAN GROVE
New album ODDWORLD due out Friday 22 October via ODDWORLD Records + SharpTone Records.
More info here.
BY TIANA SPETER