Ocean Machine Take 2.5

Seventh Wave: ★★★★★★

I'm in love with this song as an opener and in general. It sets the stage perfectly for what sort of album you're getting into and brings in the ocean motif quickly. I love how the chorus riff itself feels like ocean waves in how it crashes down on the listener. This could be my favorite opener DT has ever made.

Life: ★★★★★★

How could anyone not love this song with all their heart? It is the most positive, the most heart-felt, the most uplifting thing I have ever heard in my life. The lyrics are so perfect and bring a sort of joy to me that few other songs can, and the music? By God, I've never heard a song more packed full of ecstasy and happiness. I cry tears of joy nearly every time I listen to this song, and I think that it will carry me through almost anything I am faced with.

Night: ★★★★ 1/2

Despite being inferior to most every song here, I still do have a lot of love for this song, particularly in how it engenders thoughts of night driving through a rainy city, something you don't have to listen to the lyrics to experience. It has a pulsing force within that drives you through itself, moves you with each turn and bend. I particularly love the final pre-chorus as it perfectly brings home the solitary feeling of the song.

Hide Nowhere: ★★★★★★

Hide Nowhere has a back and forth feeling to it, like it's a battle in and of itself, not sure whether to go one way or another. There's this underlying need to get away, whilst there's an overbearing force that keeps it in place, all the while the music carries an unusual color and feeling, one somewhere between blue and fear. There's a positivity drenched in sweat and stress, yet a sort of resignation and swinging feeling, like being on a ship lost at sea with the peaceful ocean surrounding you while the dread of mortality rests in your heart.

Sister: ★★★★★★

And here, there's a quiet resignation, one that doesn't shout out to be heard as in Hide Nowhere, but instead subtly resolves to merely voice itself, not caring whether it's heard or missed. There's a sense of beauty and intimacy that comes with the music, feeling as if you're sharing the space with Devin Townsend himself. The regrets expressed here are unclear and vague, but the feelings they carry can be felt quite clearly.

3 A.M.: ★★★★★★

Now, the scene is clear: someone sitting alone in a room at 3 A.M., looking up at their bedroom ceiling with all the pain and horror of that lonely hour weighing on their soul; yet, there's the need to move forward, to go past these negative emotions and grasp triumph with fervor and determination. No matter, the hours pass quietly peacefully, unbeknownst of all that goes on in the head of the song's center.

Voices in the Fan: ★★★★★★

A haze fills the mind, and the surroundings are unclear. This shoegaze-like cover is pierced by Devin Townsend's phenomenal voice, like being deep within the ocean and seeing the sunlight above. As you drift further into the darkness, you wish you could reach that light, you wish you could communicate with the sealife around you, say anything to help them understand, but you're merely an interloper in their world, one that cannot ever hope to connect - and so you drift, alone and unreachable. The choirs at the end are memories, thoughts of people in your past, voices that you'll never hear in the flesh again, and they too drift away.

Greetings: ★★★★★★

Here lies thoughts of genuine connection, the hope that humans could ever connect with another race, so that we could not be so alone within the universe, though it is belittled by the recognition that we would be of no interest to any alien race. This song is a subtle masterpiece, one that hides amongst the outrageous brilliance of its brethren, not revealing its qualities unless you're willing to listen.

Regulator: ★★★★★★

And quite the opposite is Regulator, an absolute and heavy-handed masterpiece that wastes no time getting to the very core of its purpose, both musically and conceptually. Devin Townsend's vocals have rarely seen highs greater than here, and no one could ever hope to match his prowess in this respect (or any respect, musically speaking). I honestly glean no meaning from this song, despite how heavily I connect with this album. I have no idea what it means, nor if it even has a meaning, although I'm sure it does - that, of course, doesn't mean a damn thing, especially when the music is this incredible.

Funeral: ★★★★★★

As you can see, I've sort of dropped the more conceptual and jerk-off type writing and description of each song because I both tired of it and felt it would not aid me in describing the songs at the end of this album. Funeral will be a difficult song to listen to for anyone who has lost a loved one, whether it be a close friend or a family member, which could be one and the same too. Never has a song more clearly expressed the emotions of grief and loss than Funeral. It's such a difficult thing to express within a song without coming off as hackneyed or cheesy, something that requires genius to do, a sort of genius that few people have.

Bastard: ★★★★★★

As many times as I've expressed how much I love Bastard, I find it difficult every time figuring out how to drive home exactly how I feel about this song and what it makes me feel. These words come to mind: solitude, oceans, infinity, plains, blue, loneliness, depression, death, and other such things. How can I organize these words into a way that is both enjoyable to read and suitable to express what I want to say? As someone who has written quite a lot and is studying English, I should be able to do that in a way that doesn't require me putting all this out on the table. As many times as I've expressed how much I love Bastard, I don't know that I've ever been unique with it. I've merely said the same thing with different words, which is more or less what I'm trying to do now, and I don't know that it has ever been as successful as I'd like. I never feel as if what I'll say will connect with people the way I want it to, I've always had that disconnect, so I try my hardest to make sure it will even if I don't have the confidence necessary within my abilities. I try my best to express purely my emotions when it comes to this sort of thing; sometimes it comes off as cringey or like I'm trying far too hard, but it's a genuine expression each time. So, I suppose I'll try to be as pure as I can:

I love this song. I love it more than nearly anything in the world. It is a dear friend to me, a brother in arms that feels just the same way I do. It is the immutable presence of time, an unescapable fact of death from the passage of time, it is the very essence of time itself in how it affects me. It is seeing my father growing old and knowing I can't change a thing, it is seeing all my friends and loved ones go away into their own lives and experiencing their own losses and triumphs, it is the recognition my solitary place in life and that I, in the end, am alone in what I feel despite how hard I try to express those feelings, it is being alone in a vast sea with no one to talk to, no one to see, no one to hear, no one to feel, no one at all except the neverending waters. It is, in a word, life.

The Death of Music: ★★★★★★

Coming off the tail of perhaps the most expansive and all-encompassing song ever written is a rather subtle and quiet song, one that rarely lets out all that it wishes to express. Like with Regulator, though to a lesser degree, I have never been quite sure what this song's meaning was, although I've had the generic belief that it is DT's attempt to hold on to his views and thoughts of music, and trying to keep ahold of the idealized vision of the music business he had before his time with Steve Vai on Sex & Religion. As I wrote that out, I realized that this is probably exactly what the song is about and I just never expressed it and made it clear to myself. Nonetheless, this used to be my favorite song of all time, and it is still close even now. It shares some of the same feelings as Bastard for, though it is a more subtle expression of solitude for me, and more a plea to those still around to never leave. It's hard to say goodbye to the people or beliefs that have been apart of your life for a long, long time. But, we don't have the power to make them stay, we can only beg and beg that they never leave - and sometimes they'll leave anyways and it's nobody's fault. That is what this song expresses to me. Also, to actually describe the music again for just one moment, Devin Townsend's performance on this song may be his best ever.

Things Beyond Things: ★★★★★★

Things Beyond Things is an oddity in that it wasn't originally intended to be on the album - it was a track added later, so far as I know; yet, I could never imagine listening to Ocean Machine without this bookend. It also wasn't recorded alongside the other songs and is instead the demo track that comes from early DT demos, perhaps coming from the demo that got him his spot on Sex & Religion. Nonetheless, the song leaves us with this one fact: these things inside us all are for us alone, and they're not something for us to give weight and power. They are just things, and nothing more. The music is peaceful and serene, though not without energy, and the closing surprise is always a treat. His scream at the end I see as the cathartic release needed to close everything off.