The Banished Heart

It's all here, on Oceans Of Slumber's long-awaited third album. The sound of shattered dreams and epic nightmares, every sinew alive and vital but never flexing far from death's shadow. The sound of a blossoming creative force rising from pain's pitch-black fog to blaze and rage in hopeful, starlit skies. The sound of The Banished Heart: an extraordinary record born amid troubled times.

A darker, heavier and more elaborate work, The Banished Heart portrays Oceans Of Slumber as creative souls in the midst of a creative and emotional splurge, lost in the act of venting and purging through some of the deepest and darkest music the metal underground has conjured in years. Although still proudly channelling the melancholy spirit of the late '80s/early '90s UK death/doom scene, Oceans have evolved and expanded in myriad new directions, embracing a more grandiose aesthetic in tandem with an enhanced sense of emotional volatility and rawness. Epic by design and in execution, but acutely personal and intimate on a conceptual level, the songs on The Banished Heart showcase a refined musical vision from a band with nothing but honesty and honour in their souls.