When the news broke that progressive metal titans The Ocean had lost two-thirds of their lineup, the heavy music community as a whole held its collective breath. Longtime vocal powerhouse Loïc Rossetti, alongside Paul Seidel and David Ramis Åhfeldt, all stepped away. For lesser bands, a mass exodus like that is a definitive death knell. It’s the moment you pack up the gear, raise a glass to the memories, and gracefully bow out. But if you know anything about founding guitarist and mastermind Robin Staps, you know that “giving up” simply isn’t wired into his DNA.
Instead of letting the curtain close on a brilliant 25-year legacy, Staps dug his heels into the dirt, pivoted, and orchestrated one of the most astonishing creative rebuilds the genre has ever seen. Out of the ashes of uncertainty comes Solaris, the band’s monumental 12th studio album, set to drop on September 25 via Pelagic Records. And let me tell you, this thing is a absolute beast of a record.
Clocking in as a near-70-minute psychological sci-fi epic, Solaris takes inspiration from Andrei Tarkovsky’s iconic film masterpiece, weaving dystopian cinematic soundscapes with the crushing, world-ending post-metal riffs that fans have been begging for since the Pelagial days. It’s massive, it’s introspective, and it introduces a radically revitalised global collective—featuring new vocalists Lane Shi and Enrico Tiberi, alongside guitarists Emmanuel Jessua and Marco Gennaro, all locking arms with Staps, bassist Mattias Hägerstrand, and drummer Jordi Farré. It is a terrifyingly ambitious next chapter that proves this band is far from dead.
HEAVY had the privilege of sitting down with Robin Staps to dissect the beautiful chaos of the last two years. We talked about the heartbreaking sting of the lineup changes, the frantic energy of rebuilding a musical empire from scratch, the existential themes buried deep within their staggering new singles Light Pollution and Belligerence, the overlapping story arc and more.
