I would like to think of myself as the resident deathcore nerd. Around the Metal Wani camp, I have named myself the “deathcore guy” and have reviewed several deathcore records. At the very least, I would refer to myself as an ardent deathcore consumer, with tastes getting more refined the more time I spend steeped in the genre. It is then summarily surprising that a veteran band of the scene like Oceano has slipped through my net for so long. They are one of those bands that are always mentioned in the second wave of deathcore when bands like Suicide Silence, Whitechapel, Carnifex, and Thy Art Is Murder were bringing the genre to the masses. While I have spent more than my fair share of time with those bands, and have even reviewed records from those bands for this magazine, Oceano has always been just outside my radar.

I intend to change that by reviewing their latest effort Living Chaos.

It’s wild to me that Living Chaos is Oceano’s sixth record in their 15-year career, as the band re-emerged from their hiatus after 2017’s Revelation. Truth be told, I can count on one hand the number of Oceano tracks I have heard, but I am familiar with the snippets of their catalog that have gone viral on social media over the years. So it is with a fresh set of unbiased ears that I dive into Living Chaos.

Frankly, I do not see what the fuss was all about.

The first single “Mass Produced” was released a few weeks ago, heralding the return of the band and driving all the old-guard deathcore fans into a frenzy, celebrating the return of the illustrious band. The track itself feels almost self-referential. Whether this was intentional or not (if it was it is genius), the track feels extremely generic, and as the title states, mass-produced. A mishmash of genre tropes, the extended range dropped tuned chugs with “djenty” leanings, overdubbed layer leads, and clean notes added for that added modern metal shimmer, only to be dropped into yet another gratuitous breakdown. As a lead single, I was left underwhelmed by the product Oceano was producing in 2024.

The other singles “Wounds Never Healed” and “The Price of Pain” fell into the same pit that “Mass Produced” dug. “Wounds Never Healed” opens with an electronic sample that you could find on a modern metalcore record (think Erra, Invent Animate, or even Wage War). The track attempts at ballad-core, with an emotional chorus of screamed-cleans over big chords. This track also goes down the modern core checklist, without any of the songwriting glitter that a defter hand would use to make even generic chops sound enjoyable, if not groundbreaking. The chanted rise of “Nothing Will Change” feels contrived, if not downright cheesy, especially when the track doesn’t do anything with the accrued momentum. Perhaps “The Price of Pain” will fare better? Well, in a way. One of the few tracks with any semblance of intricate riffing, the track goes down the Thy Art for an Autopsy route, with arrangements mimicking those bands almost to the letter, but doing a rather amateur job of it, before kicking us back into simplistic chug territory.

The rest of the tracks follow the same generic modern deathcore formula, which is particularly disappointing for a band with a lengthy career as Oceano. It dismays me that if Living Chaos is what the band is “supposed to sound like” it would push me away from diving into their back catalog. Opener “Wasted Life” continues to make pale copies of TAIM/FFAA tropes, while “Darkness Rising” throws bits and pieces of the most generic “symphonic” pads at us, with plodding chuggy rhythms that take us nowhere.  Many of the arrangements on the record, and chosen melodies push Oceano into the no-man land between metalcore and deathcore, with sprinkles of “djent” brought via the extended-range guitars. It’s a pity that none of the sections feel particularly memorable, nor even enjoyable at the moment. If Living Chaos was a new band’s debut record, the product would be more favorably looked at. But ultimately, it would fall into the ever-increasing pile of mediocre products, immediately forgotten in the streaming era.

Throughout the runtime of Living Chaos, one thing becomes painfully evident. This record does not feel like a musician’s record. It does not feel like a guitarist’s record. No, this record is a “producer’s record”. The first claim my inner reviewer voice exclaimed was “did a computer write this?”. This directly led me to the “this sounds like the album was written inside the studio by an external producer, well-versed in the genre to provide a background soundscape for the vocalist to do his thing!”. The tracks are hard carried by the overdubs, with layers carrying the melody of the track, the guitars merely providing dressing and adding nothing to the conversation. Logically concluding that Living Chaos, the record, and the title track “Living Chaos”, comes off as a bedroom one-man band, probably a mainline vocalist, with basic chops at guitar, relying on studio magicking to get to the real meat and potatoes, his own vocal performance.

In that regard, Living Chaos feels like the “Adam Warren and Friends extravaganza”. Nobody can argue that the man himself, vocalist and only longtime member, Adam Warren is giving us all he’s got with his vocals. He’s throwing everything at us, the growls, the screams, the barks, the cleans, the in-betweens, all of it. For the most part, his vocal performances are enjoyable, as he has proven yet again that he is a formidable vocalist and a veteran of the scene. I do want to compliment him for not trying to dive into the vocal Olympics schtick to create the nastiest, gnarliest, most inhuman noises, to create TikTok clips to reach viral stardom. His vocals remind me of a simpler time of mid-2000s metalcore and deathcore. Sadly, that’s as far as the compliments toward individual musicianship go. The guitar work on Living Chaos is quite lackluster, especially in 2024, when Deathcore is spreading its tentacles into as many subgenres, cross-genres, soundscapes, etc. to create rich and diverse sounds. With one-man bands like Disembodied Tyrant and Firekeeper out there absolutely flooring with their dense and intense songwriting, Oceano has already fallen by the wayside if this is all they can offer.

Living Chaos is a disappointing, generic record, providing next to nothing in terms of songwriting freshness, depth, or even dumb fun. A record that feels both painfully amateurish, yet soullessly a “producer’s record” to provide fodder for vocals, Living Chaos is left wanting on all fronts. Oceano better step up their writing, if they want to stay relevant in an exponentially expanding scene.