Based around Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, Ocean Shores are more than your typical metal band.
They combine old-school sensibilities with modern textures to bridge the divide between genres in the most simplest and purest of fashions.
By allowing the music to do the talking.
Following the release of the band’s debut EP One Foot In The Grave, Ocean Shores found themselves at the mercy of a global illness, much like the rest of the world’s population, but being a band still in their infancy did not have an existing and established fan base that could be guaranteed to still be there when the world resumed.
Instead of labouring on what could have been, Ocean Shores set themselves the task of improving on an already impressive body of work, taking one of their existing tracks Go One More and placing it in the capable hands of As Paradise Falls’ guitarist Danny Kenneally to do the mixing and mastering.
The result is an even greater slab of aggression than ever before, which captures the full raw intensity of a band that has emerged triumphantly from the shadows with a renewed path and vigor.
HEAVY caught up with vocalist Eli Sapolu to talk about the new song, which will be released through streaming platforms on August 12 before ramping things up with a film clip on August 19.
“We’ve come up with this song, and obviously we jammed it a few times until we figured out how we were going to structure it properly,” he explained. “Brenton, our guitarist, came up with the idea of making it fast and making it heavy. Something enjoyable that you can take to the gym and do that workout and try to push that extra bit hard. We came together and collaborated it together as a band – they wrote the music – and we went to As Paradise Falls’ guitarist Danny Kenneally’s place to do all the pre-pro, tracking, guitars, everything to the vocals. That’s where we ended up with him. He’s pretty good, really switched on, and did everything really quickly. He was just easy to work with. It was a lot different to where we’ve been before in recording studios, where there was a bit more pressure. As a band, we knew nothing. Before Brenton joined, we knew nothing about pre-production. We had no idea what it was (laughs). With our EP we just went to the studio and said let’s go, and the producer would say ‘are you happy with that’ and we would say ‘yeah, I think so’. We were happy with the EP, it turned out okay, and then we had people like Danny came up to us and said ‘have you done pre-production before?’ And we were like, ‘what the hell is pre-production?’”
In the full interview, Eli talks more about Go One More, the meaning behind the song, the upcoming video and what to expect, working with Danny, learning as a band, future new music, upcoming shows and more.
Interview intro song: FRANKENBOK ‘Confidence Man‘ https://open.spotify.com/track/0nKy9ZvHV7UDuJX0FIbliP?si=f164dc32233a40e6
