Post-metal visionaries The Ocean have announced their 12th studio album, Solaris, and shared its lead single, “Light Pollution.” A near-70-minute journey to the stars and back, Solaris is based on the late Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky‘s masterpiece of the same name, and is described as the most ambitious album of the band’s 25-year career.
From 2022 to 2025, The Ocean lost two-thirds of its members — the lineup that had made fan-favorite albums Phanerozoic I (2018), Phanerozoic II (2020), and Holocene (2023) gradually disbanded, culminating in a victorious final bow at Hellfest last year. Only founding guitarist, songwriter and lyricist Robin Staps, longtime bassist Mattias Hägerstrand, and new drummer Jordi Farré (also of Crippled Black Phoenix) remained. Rather than call it quits, they rebuilt: Emmanuel Jessua (Hypno5e) and Marco Gennaro joined on guitar, while vocalists Enrico Tiberi and Lane Shi (Elizabeth Colour Wheel, Otay:Onii) stepped in to replace Loïc Rossetti.
New vocalist Enrico Tiberi sings at the beginning of the song. Orbital motion is not only the gravitationally curved trajectory of a celestial body; in another context — alluding to early scenes in the film Solaris — orbital motion in water refers to the circular or elliptical paths water particles follow as waves pass through, transferring energy without moving the water itself forward.
“Light Pollution” begins with synth textures that connect seamlessly to its predecessor, Holocene, before gradually picking up momentum and culminating in a towering, slow-burning finale of orchestral grandeur, suffocating heaviness, and subdued rhythmic complexity. The song explores the pitfalls of 21st-century technology and humanity’s growing obsession with simulated reality.
Pre-order the album here.
Staps commented: “We’ve witnessed several communication revolutions throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but have we actually become any better at communicating? Has there really been forward movement, or has the motion been orbital — have we merely been treading water? Light pollution symbolizes the transparency of the postmodern age, permeating everything and everyone. Everything is constantly visible; we’ve lost the darkness to hide in, and with the relentless glare of communication, we’ve also lost our privacy.”
The music video for “Light Pollution” was directed by filmmaker Craig Murray (Mogwai, Converge) and combines the arrival of new vocalists Lane Shi and Enrico Tiberi with the song’s lyrical themes. Staps described Murray as “a one-man army — every detail of the film exists in his head before he starts to shoot, he’s got hand-drawn sketches of every single scene. He gets up at 6:30 to make molds, shoot and direct, and he’s still up at 2 a.m., gluing tentacles or smearing slime and sand over faces.”
For the recording of Solaris, the band expanded its creative circle with contributions from Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream on modular synthesizers. Jens Bogren, who previously mixed the band’s landmark albums Pelagial, Phanerozoic I, and Phanerozoic II, once again handled mixing and mastering. The full album lineup also includes Orestis Zafiriou (keys), Simen Eifring (trombone), and Jiawei Zhang (vibraphone).
