Oceansize everyone into position rapidshare

And those people who say they sound like a new Pink Floyd really should point out to me how they sound like PF except for being progressive. No other comparison to PF exists here.

Oceansize is it's own sound and own band, and they are simply amazing! Great single, especially for the B sides. Oceansize fans need to search this out, and if you want a taste of what the band sounds like, make sure to pass judgement based on the B-sides here. Yes it's short, but still worthy of 4 stars. There is definitely a good enough variety here to keep things interesting, but the album is also more structured to a specific sound.

Full of complexity, the meters are very difficult technically, yet there is so much emotion in their music as there always is. They definitely accomplish the goals of so many post-rock bands that try to achieve an orchestral sound with rock instruments, especially with dense guitars and long crescendos.

Oceansize doesn't always follow that formula here keeping things surprising and fresh throughout. The closest thing to post-rock formulation is "Trial of Fire" which builds into an amazing climax that puts many of those bands to shame.

And that orchestral sound is accomplished so well as you get in that symphonic like ending. Extremely complex, yet a softer sound that still holds a lot of tension building, but not in the form of dynamics as much as in atmosphere.

I love this track and think it is one of the most original tracks in new progressive rock. Stunningly beautiful, yet not in the way you would expect it to be. When I say it's a softer sound, that is only in comparison with the rest of the tracks that come before it.

No, it's not mellow at all, just softer. The excellent complexity of the album continues through each track. There is only one instrumental on the album which is "An Old Friend of the Christy's" which holds a lot of mood changes and character as any other song on the album. The last track "Frames" slacks off in the noise factor a bit, but still carries it's weight.

Even though it ends the album in a satisfying way, you need to search out the special edition of this album that has the bonus track "Vorhees" which in itself is over 11 minutes a bonus track over 11 minutes you say? There are many that compare Oceansize to Tool, which I don't agree with because they have their own sound, but if there is a track that sound the most similar to Tool, it would be this bonus track, even the crazy dissonant guitar solo that also uses keyboards to push it forward to even more of an extreme.

Definitely as great as any of the regular tracks on the album and worth searching for. It is so hard for me at this point in Oceansize's discography to find an album that is not a masterpiece. Everything they have released up until now has been some of the best progressive rock that I have heard and each album has been amazing.

There is never a lack of complexity, excellent dynamism, originality, challenging and genre stretching progressive rock in their music and I continue to recommend this band highly. Consistently excellent and once again, another masterpiece of progressive rock music. I really love this album. There is still the hardness from the previous album, but there are some amazing soft parts throughout the album and it rounds things out very well. The album starts out with "The Charm Offensive" which is reminiscent of the debut album and you get the impression that this is going to be great like the last one.

You get that post-metal atmosphere but with a lot of expression, great vocals and a lot of ingenuity. In between the first track and the 2nd, there is a hidden track which starts off soft but builds quickly and sounds almost like a return to "The Charm Offensive", but this does have an official title called "emp erical error". It is easy to mistake this as an extension of the first track. Next comes "Heaven Alive" which is definitely a more mainstream sounding track, but still an excellent song.

The vocals are still to the forefront and there is a nice solid baseline. Towards the last part of the song, the chorus becomes a multi-layered vocal that sounds almost like a choir of sorts that along with that ever present bass line, is an exciting and enticing sound. I love this track. Then you get the last of the punch with the explosive "A Homage to Shame". This one is a solid track, very hard, very emotional and simply astounding.

The multi-layered vocals return here but this time the choir has been turned upside down almost giving an opposite effect of the previous track. This has to be heard. That takes up the first part of the album. Next we move on to more amazing music, albeit a little more mellow but still with a lot of substance, emotion and excellent musicianship. The drums throughout this album are just plain awesome, beating out rhythms that normally would not match the meter of the songs at times, but still sounding excellent.

It gives the songs a more sense of sophistication and originality, there is just no staleness in this album anyway. After this great track, we get the epic masterpiece and also one of my all time favorite songs "Music for a Nurse. Now it seems that Oceansize is digging deeper into the post rock sound, adding some space rock, taking the style of the best Sigur Ros song structure, adding their signature multi-layered voice sound, tuning the vocals down further into the total mix ala Devin Townsend style and doing this they created an epic masterpiece that just sends shivers down my spine.

The format of the song is pretty typical post-rock structure, starting out soft and simple and building to an amazing climax. The difference here is the beauty of the melody, which is based upon a complex chord structure and repeated with the plucked notes of the guitar strings.

This is an old Classical Music style called a Ground where the melody is played by the low notes while other counter-melodies and variations are played around that base. The melody that provides the base for the song is beautiful and when the song starts, it is almost the only thing you hear, very much like a Sigur Ros song. Other guitars and percussion and more multi-layered vocals get added in and keep building the music as the emotions continues to build and the tension rises throughout the song.

You end up with an orchestral sounding wall of music. Simply amazing! Continuing on with the album, you get more amazing music, challenging rhythms in places, from this point of the album, the vocals usually stay mixed into the music so they become part of the entire song.

I love this method of mixing the voices down into the music and like I said earlier, this is the same method that Devin Townsend uses and also why I love his sound so much also. The music continues to be excellent and original, but it wasn't enough for Oceansize to have just one epic masterpiece on this album. This one is more dependent upon sudden dynamic changes, from soft to hard passages throughout and once again with those amazing multi-layered vocals that I love.

I like to compare this kind of music to Classical Music, but this is Progressive rock's version of Classical. It is complex, dynamic, original, emotional. It has it all. My own personal rating system uses 5 stars like ProgArchives, but I also add a 6th star for the albums that I think are perfect. There are not many albums that I consider 6 star albums, so I don't use it very often, only when I find something simply amazing that moves me beyond words.

That it takes longer to reach the chorus than most singles last in their entirety sums up the Oceansize mentality perfectly. Almost every song here has enough twists and turns and enough ideas to sustain most bands for at least five albums. Oceansize are all about grandeur and it is something that they do well, although every so often their pretensions get the better of them and the songs can sound flabby and unnecessarily complex.

Sometimes you wish they would just get to the point. The point, it would appear is only truly apparent after several listens. There are no real immediate kicks, instead Everyone into Position is an album has to be allowed to grow by the listener.

Most of the tracks are so packed with ideas and sound that it is too much to take in straight away. Songs that might initially seem rambling and self-important Music for a Nurse being one such example reveal themselves to be beautiful sonic magic-eye paintings, which may also cause a sudden need to revisit My Bloody Valentine. The same can be said for the album as a whole, which is a lot less challenging to unpack than Effloresce , which would jump from the metal of "You Wish" to the dark alternative of "One Day All this Could Be Yours" to the anthemic rock of "Amputee" without batting an eyelid.

Here, the closest thing to an outlier is "A Homage to a Shame", easily the heaviest song, though this still manages to fit the tracklist without too much friction.

This cohesive writing does come at minor expense of the eclecticism that made Oceansize such a special band, but there is still plenty on offer in this department; the contrasts are just a little less stark than on Effloresce. This repeats itself across the album; in this sense the post-rock pseudointerval "Mine Host" is as apt a reflection of the whole as big-hitter rock of the opening trio.

This track disregards the rest of the album's tendencies insofar as it plays off exaggerated dynamics and benefits from segmented songwriting, kicking off with a five minute instrumental intro that punctuates a soothing motif with abrupt distorted chords. The track's second phase straightens out somewhat and moves onto the album's vocal highlight; Vennart delivers a passionate and uplifting performance and finds himself backed by choice harmonies, rounding the album off in style.

With Everyone Into Position Oceansize aimed for a more accessible album with potential radio hits, and whilst they failed to hit the big time commercially, the experience of attempting more refined songwriting was clearly a productive one for them. Elements of this ethic would transfer into their more expansive prog masterpiece Frames , but as far as prog dipping its toes into the world of radio goes, you could certainly do far worse than this record.

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