Ethereal Metal Webzine

Ryan Murray | Co-Owner | Chief Editor | Contributor

r.m.music84@gmail.com

Supporting Soen on their very first North American headlong tour is a band known as Oceans of Slumber. Having first discovered this band when I reviewed their self-titled 2020 release, I was under the impression that this would be just another progressive metal band, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. This band easily falls into their own genre, with mixed influences that create music that is heavy, light, intimate, soulful and really quite deep and beautiful.

This time around, however, they decided to strip down their sound, so they came out as a three-piece unit. This tour saw Cammie on vocals, Dobber on keys and Semir on bass and backing vocals, which created one of the most beautiful music sets I’ve ever witnessed.

Cammie’s vocals are always absolutely stunning, but with this more pulled back set, it really creates a different vibe and a different atmosphere, bringing the audience on the ride of a lifetime filled with tears and an inner stillness not too often seen at a live music show.

With tracks from as far back as the “December” album, this set offers a variety of the band’s discography, with a completely reimagined sound and feel. With the band already having deep emotional ties to their music, you can imagine what a stripped down, more intimate set would feel like. The band also had an absolutely beautiful cover of Björk’s “All Is Full of Love”.

The set included the following tracks –

• Sunlight
• No Color, No Light
• To The Sea
• The Lighthouse
• The Hanging Tree
• Just A Day
• All Is Full Of Love (Björk Cover)

Having the opportunity to chat with Cammie before the show, we got to chat about their first headlining tour that finished up earlier this fall, their new release “Starlight And Ash”, and Cammie’s most proud moment of the band’s long history.

If you haven’t heard Starlight & Ash yet, be sure to give it a listen!

One of Cammie’s answers, unfortunately, had a tech issue that couldn’t be fixed, so I’ve included the question, along with her answer below.

Ryan – “The idea of ’Starlight And Ash’ being set in a fictional coastal town with a lighthouse at the center, with the town’s inhabitants being influenced one way or another by the light house with some even worshipping it is a pretty strong metaphor for the world we live in today, where hatred, racism, religious fanaticism and much more are causing deep division everywhere. Cammie, while the album has been inspired by the memories and experiences of the entire band being woven in beautifully throughout, your experiences with religion growing up was one of the core inspirations behind the album. Having grown up in a split faith family that have opposite beliefs must’ve been extremely difficult and stressful, probably with lots of head butting. Can you talk a bit more about how that division influenced the album?”

Cammie – “Growing up in a strict religious household definitely had its challenges. Those challenges were exaggerated with my parents going through a period of different ideologies. At times, most of the time, seem to be in conflict. Faith can be something good, unfortunately when it comes to religion it is often deranged and manipulated to control people and oppress people. Seeing the dark side of religion, and religious people I harbored a lot of hurt, stress, and drama around these issues. I took this to ultimately form this perspective for the new album in an attempt to release some of this burden into the storyline. I wanted to show how religion could really be infused in anything and at its core maybe it isn’t so beneficial, or is something that can easily become fanatical.“

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