It is about to become a very hectic time for prog rockers Glass Ocean. Not only are the band heading out on the road with their good mates Opus Of A Machine but they are also preparing to release a brand new album… and if you head along to these shows you may just get a preview of what the new record is going to bring.
Before they hit the bitumen HEAVY Mag decided to sit down with Glass Ocean’s frontman Tobias Atkins to find out exactly what fans can expect.
“It’s been awhile,” says Atkins when we start our discussion by talking about how the band feel about heading back out on tour. “We have been wanting to do something with Opus for awhile… a really, really long time actually. This has been about two years in the making. We’ve had conversations, doing gigs and meeting up at shows and now it is finally happening. We love the Opus guys and we just think this is the perfect tour for us to join forces.”
So what has it been that has made Glass Ocean so desperately want to head out on the road with Opus Of A Machine? “I think it is just the chemistry,” says Atkins after thinking about it for a moment. “Seeing them live has always been amazing, we have always loved their music but also handing out with them as mates has always been pretty special. I just think that we sort of elevate each other and push each other and there is also a great love and respect for each other’s music.”
The talk of music leads me to ask about the new material that the band have been working on and when they think we will be able to hear it for the first time. “We spend about two years writing,” he explains. “Actually it was probably a little more than that, I think it has been about two-and-a-half-years writing, but we have written enough for two albums. So, what we have decided to do is cut it back and do something with it. It took us a little while to get there because we really wanted to get the sound right, we knew what we wanted to do and we went after it pretty hard. That will be out early next year, we are just finishing off the videos and the marketing and how it will come out. We are really excited though because we have been sitting on it for awhile… we have been sitting on it since February… so the boys are all pretty antsy but we are excited to be finally releasing it.”
“The first EP people liked, and they liked the second one to but the sound that people gravitated towards was the music with the more proggy elements to it,” explains Atkins when I ask him what he means by the fact that the band really wanted to find their sound with their new material. “We kind of denied that we were a prog band for awhile and then we realised ‘no we are definitely a prog band’ so I think this will be our proggiest album yet, and I am really proud to say that to. We didn’t want to do pop or anything like that we just wanted to be as weird and creative as we could so I think people will hear elements of the first record in there, but it will all be dialled up un to eleven.”
So what can fans expect from these shows? “Expect us to give everything we have got on stage,” says Atkins. “We really hope the fans enjoy the new songs, we’ve put a lot of work into them and we have a very special show planned – it’s intimate but also very heavy and it will be something a little bit different from us. We’re with Opus as well so that is going to be epic, an epic night of Aussie prog.”
All the details for the Glass Ocean/Opus Of A Machine tour can be found below.
