Oceans Of Slumber: The New Southern Gothic
For those who liked their progressive metal with an extreme bent, OCEANS OF SLUMBER have been hotly-tipped for some time. Since welcoming vocalist Cammie Beverly almost ten years ago, they’ve undergone their own metamorphosis, their death-tinged prog slowly injecting more blues, gothic and even gospel elements. 2020’s self-titled was a landmark album for them in this shift as they reached the pinnacle of what they could do with the style. It made perfect sense to them, then, to change the formula entirely and take a new direction, so we sat down with Beverly herself to talk about all things Starlight And Ash, their brand new album.
In short, that shift is “moving away from being so technical and instrumental, to be more vocally focused,” she explains. If you’ve heard Cammie sing – and if not, you owe it to yourself to remedy that – you’ll understand why. Her vocals are soulful, emotive and have brought a whole new dimension and suite of influences to the band. It’s still a big change though; Starlight And Ash jettisons those OPETHian prog death elements and instead welcomes in a shift to what they’re calling the new Southern Gothic. “If they’ve kept up with the band I don’t think it should be too much of a surprise,” she shrugs, “otherwise, what this new album is, we’re honing in on our songwriting skills. That’s focused on telling the story and that lends itself to different elements that we want to do, musically.”
When we put it to her what that phrase new Southern Gothic means exactly, outside of the dialled-up Gothic elements musically, she explains that they also drew on Southern literature tropes, but with their own, OCEANS OF SLUMBER spin on them. “For us, it’s the Southern Gothic style of literature and aesthetic. You take these classic, antebellum Southern ideals and you morph them, flip them around to have a more inclusive identity,” she begins, expanding that, “you take out the lean on slavery and persecution of the different minority figures and you give the lead roles or identities of prominence.”
It’s inspired in large part by her own upbringing as a black woman in the Southern US. “I grew up right on the coasts, so you get the jazz of New Orleans, you get black to white folk, Southern folk like, folk music country, hip hop and you know, you have the modern touch of being a metropolis city that is Houston, but also all of the the old historical value of all the many genres and styles that come through of being a coastal town on the south.” With all that in mind, it was critical for her to find those voices that were less represented in classical Southern literature and amplify them.
Take the video to lead single The Waters Rising, for instance; it depicts plenty of religious iconography with bibles and rosaries and visually tells the story of “a girl in love with another girl, that goes against her religious upbringing. It’s a calling away from the church,” Beverly explains of the song. That mirrors her own experiences; “it was my inner voice, calling me to get away from my religious upbringing and get away from the church. I felt like I had this stuff down in myself that had these questions, or had these resentments towards the church,” she recalls.
That questioning element is something she’s particularly keen to bring to their music and keep alive. At a musical level, Starlight And Ash questions what progressive music is by challenging its tropes while thematically, it calls on us to challenge cultural or religious norms that oppress and harm others, particularly minorities. There’s parallels she draws to the modern world that, while the album isn’t specifically about them, is certainly applicable. “What we’re dealing with is such a crossroads of religious voices and religious outlooks becoming incredibly prominent for a majority of society, we have crazy abortion laws that are trying to get passed, we have laws that are making it unsafe for trans children to express themselves or have a safe space or speak up when they need help,” she says animatedly.
As she succinctly puts it, “In the name of God, people do such terrible things. There’s no hate like Christian love.” That sentiment ties into the lighthouse centred in the coastal town of Starlight And Ash, where the town’s occupants worship; “it’s playing off this self importance and this ego and this maniacal obsession that comes over people that they have the truth, they have what’s gonna save people that without them and their ideologies and their religion and everything’s gonna fail,” she explains.
There’s even some metatextual elements to the album; while it’s very much a concept album rooted in these themes, it was created with the idea of unpacking it not only on repeat listens but that by reading not only the lyrics but interviews, people can be prompted to examine its themes and apply them to their own lives more deeply. Ultimately, Starlight And Ash wants to raise more questions than it answers; “why do we accept that, why would somebody be this way; that, to me is the importance of being an artist that has advocacy inside them,” she says of their work. In that sense, OCEANS OF SLUMBER are a runaway success; challenging the antiquated worldviews that harm far too many people, especially minorities, all while challenging their own identity and what people think they should be.
Starlight And Ash is out now via Century Media Records.
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