After their critically acclaimed debut album "Dear G-d...", Being as an Ocean established themselves as one of the most unique and promising melodic hardcore acts. It's very hard nowadays to be noticed in the hardcore community, because of saturation of bands with almost the same sound, but Being as an Ocean managed to be very recognizable inside the scene and made some space for themselves. After some line-up changes in 2013., 2014. saw the release of their second full length album called "How We Both Wondrously Perish".
 
The name of the album comes from the last line of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke titled “Pieta”, which is not something we didn't expect from these guys, knowing that a big part of their previous album is based on spoken word lyrics, inspired by popular poems. The sleeping girl on the album cover perfectly fits the whole story, as a lot of work of this band has to do with sleep and dreams.
 
The album starts off with the song "Mediocre Shakespeare", a really good opener, and based on this song we already can see what is yet to come for the rest of the album. A mix of clean and distorted guitars, ambient parts, spoken words and harsh vocals delivered from Joel Quarticcio is something we've seen before, but the main change for band on this album are the clean vocals from the new member and rhythm guitarist, Michael McGough. Definitely very similar to Jonny Craig's voice (best to be heard on second track "Death's Great Black Wing Scrapes The Air"), his poppy, edgy singing brought the band kind of a Four Year Strong, A Day to Remember pop-punk melodies, and adds another dimension to Being as An Ocean. ''Death's Great Black Wing Scrapes The Air'' is a straight post-hardcore song and something you would expect from this band. Simple, yet great instrumental parts are something that'll stick in your head immediately, and relaxing, spoken words outro gives this song a brilliant ending. The next song starts where the previous one has ended, spoken words from Joel and a catchy riff make great intro before it breaks into mixing of harsh shouted vocals and clean singing on choruses. Definitely a song to dance to, and probably a number one hit from this album. Title track is an intense instrumental and it fits very well before next "The Poets Cry For More" which starts slower, develops into a great mixture of scream and clean vocals, hard repetitive riff and ends in an ambient tone. It’s one of the highlights of the album, for sure. "'Grace, Teach Us What We Lack" is the only song on the album that features a guest vocalist, Johnny O'Hagan from Idlehands. On the last two songs on the album, the aggressive guitars are almost gone, and the clean vocals and soft melodies are taking over.
 
Instruments are very well done on the whole album, and we can see some new stuff that probably wasn't expected, like synthesizers on "We Drag The Dead On Leashes", soft jingles and even trumpets on "Mothers". New drummer Connor Denis fits great, and special credit must go to this, only 17 years old guy.
 
Lyrics are completely done by Joel, and are mostly with a positive message. He said about the writing process: "Every track on the album, is a story for itself, so this is definitely not a concept album, I just wrote what was in my head at the moment. I just tried to deal with the stuff, write what I wanna write and yell it into the mic. It deals with god, but I'm not trying to force anything on anyone, I just try to be a humble, spiritual person from day to day, and the album itself is not religious, it's just me trying to be completely honest to myself."
 
“How We Both Wondrously Perish” is for sure a step forward for Being as an Ocean. Maybe it's not what was expected, this album is a more diverse approach than the previous one. You may like it or not, but the quality of this album is unquestionable. We are only to wait what is next from this great five piece and to see if they will have a bright future as some people in community think they will.
 
Rate: 9/10
 
Mirko | Of Core's