Released: 2023
Genre: Heavy Psych, Stoner doom
Sounds Like: Red Scalp, Bees Made Honey in the Vein Tree, ISIS
Homeland: France
What makes Silence By The Raging Sea elite and sit atop OHMs Peak?
Occult Hand Order have taken their heavy psychedlic sound to new heights on this one. It's a trippy affair with beautiful and patient soundscapes
This album will take you on a journey through various peaks and valleys of soft psychedila to heavy doom-like fuzz
The vocals from bassist Hugo Zepah are nestled perfectly into the music with brilliant echo. His tone is mostly clean, but reachs deep when needed. 'Sailers' is the perfect example of his vocal range
Silence By The Raging Sea is a vey cathartic album. The well-timed change-ups between the soft reflective moments and the spatial doom are brilliant as you will find yourself deeply enganged
Track Listing:
1. Sink 7:45
2. Sailors 7:12
3. Pyre 10:39
4. Fever 5:18
5. Tidal Waves 7:47
6. Golden Bones 11:02
Dive deeper into Silence By The Raging Sea with our Q&A with Occult Hand Order
OHMs Peak: Your band name is unusual. Can you take us through the name derivation of Occult Hand Order?
Occult Hand Order: Our bassist has a tattoo that represents a hand with some occult signs, so that gave him the idea for the name, so there's no deep explainations on this one.
OHMs Peak: We love the vibrant earth tones and concept within your album art. Who is the mastermind and can you encapsulate the vision for us?
Occult Hand Order: Morgane Dezaubris (Mobsidan) made all the band's artworks since day one. It has always been easy to work with her as she's a really close friend. She always manages to understand what we mean with a record, she was there every step of the creation of Silence By The Raging Sea and we feel she managed once more to reflect our vision onto the cover of the album. She pictured tears, fire, despair, desolation, in a way that it's not depressing, and rather beautiful, and this is what our album is all about.
OHMs Peak: The build-up and patience within ‘Golden Bones’ is absolutely mesmerizing. Can you take us through the meaning and creation of this great track?
Occult Hand Order: We always wanted to create this kind of song. We all listen to progressive music and finally being able to compose this was a great joy for us.
'Golden Bones' is about what we leave behind, what will be found after mankind vanishes. It's the idea that everything will eventually fall into oblivion. It's a mean for us to cast away the fear we feel about this idea. Creating this song was really challenging for us as we really wanted to execute the progression the right way. This process helped us mature our sound in the end!
OHMs Peak: While we are big fans of your prior release The Chained The Burned The Wounded, it is Silence By the Raging Sea that captivated us diving much deeper into expansive spacial landscapes. Take us through your mindset into the expansion of your sound and the almost concept album feel with its consistent aura and melodies?
Occult Hand Order: After releasing The Chained The Burned The Wounded back in 2020, we had to keep on creating, as it was almost impossible to go on tour at the time, so composing new songs helped us keeping the band existing. We all really wanted to create something that would go further than the last record we just made. We also had one time to work on our sound, our gear, to perfect how we deliver the songs live. Times were a little bit depressing at that time with the pandemic, which maybe is why the album is more melancholic.
We worked on new material for almost 2 years, trying some during our shows, as we give live performance a lot of importance in our creative process. We finally decided to record this album during the summer of 2022, in a house far from everything in the countryside. We stayed there for 2 weeks, trying to focus only on the record, and it was really intense. Emotionally, physically, it was really hard but also rewarding because we're really happy with the result.
OHMs Peak: What bands most influenced your creative sound??
Occult Hand Order: For this record our influences changed a lot. We all listened more and more Post Rock, Post Metal bands, things that are more experimental also, like Russian Circles, Big Brave or Emma Ruth Rundle. We obviously still enjoy Stoner/Doom/Psych records, but we are maybe more sensible to the heaviness that lies in the meaning and the mood of songs we listen rather than in the riffs.
OHMs Peak: Occult Hand Order is stranded on an island with only a solar powered record player. The entire band must agree to only 1 album to have during your stay, what album is it?
Occult Hand Order: That one is actually pretty challenging ! The three of us absolutely love Dying Surfer Meets His Maker by All Them Witches, so it might be this one.
Occult Hand Order are:
Tony Duvillard - Drums
Nicolas Fabre - Guitar
Hugo Zepah - Bass & vocals
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