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OceanoAscendants

★★★☆ For my money, this is one mean improvement over the last Oceano album. To get there, apparently the band traveled halfway between The Acacia Strain and Vildhjarta… and then tunneled straight down. With the right kind of thinking, you can hear this as an intellectual level-up. With a different kind of thinking, this is a suitable soundtrack for breaking your hand on concrete.

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OceanoIncisions

★★☆☆ The most monstrous of this year’s Cookie Monster vocals, this album still manages to keep things interesting, taking unexpected musical turns that verge on progressive… while still staying firmly rooted in the familiar detuned deathcore territory of bands like The Acacia Strain and Thy Art Is Murder. Original enough to not be completely disposable, but not excellent enough to withstand obsessive re-listens, Oceano still turns in an album worth at least one perusal.