Germany-based post-metal band The Ocean (aka The Ocean Collective) performed at The Lodge Room in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles, CA on February 28th. I had never heard of the band before I discovered the show so it was one of those bands to take a chance to shoot that I was not familiar with.

The band, whose last album was released last May titled ‘Holocene’ under the Pelagic Records label, formed in Berlin, Germany almost 25 years ago. The band has included around 40 musicians in the past and is currently led by frontman Logic Rossetti.

As I arrived I hit the front of the stage and waited till showtime. I had my settings and gear already prepped up and decided to use the time by writing a report from a show I shot the night before for GSM and it was at that time I was listening and observing the audience waiting with me. Conversations from young and older fans on how long they’ve followed the band and tours and shows they’ve seen them in. They talked about how their work reminds them of other past artists and their favorite band tracks.

The performance was brooding and raw with occasional lights and fog immersed from the stage onto the audience. The feeling I got from the band was a cross between Tool and Deftones with a very little dash of Every Time I Die. The band was intimate and reserved in the beginning but halfway through the 90-minute performance the emotions changed as in two instances including when Loic jumped into the audience they caught him and while in the air he was able to be raised on his knees in perfect balance.

The show started with a dark and mysterious atmosphere and ended with an assault of lights flashing vigorously. At the show's end, the band took a selfie from the stage with the crowd through the fog. I edited the photos based on the feeling I had of the show which was gritty and beautifully haunting at times so I had to give most of the photos the black and white treatment.

THE OCEAN