Since forming in 2013, River Becomes Ocean has played shows with Funeral For A Friend and The Qemists, seen its members move from France and Germany to Brighton, as well as collaborated with Shane Told of Silverstein. Later this month, they release their second EP – ‘December’.
Consisting of five tracks, ‘December’ sees River Becomes Ocean embrace cinematic characteristics and combines them with a sturdy brand of hardcore. Throughout the EP, songs such as ‘Seven’ and ‘We Will’, take advantage of bold choruses, guttural screams and stringent riffs to create a gritty yet expansive sound.
Overall, ‘December’ sees River Becomes Ocean push themselves beyond their former heavy-fuelled hardcore sound. With an evolving and subtly diverse sound, we asked the band to pick out five influential tracks.
Linkin Park – Easier To Run
‘Easier To Run’, taken from Linkin Park’s album ‘Meteora’, is one of the songs that influenced us most.
Its simple chords create such a great impact, combined with the major vocal melody in the chorus. Not to forget how catchy it is! Definitely deserves to be on top of the list!
Avenged Sevenfold – A Little Piece Of Heaven
Out of the five guys that form A7X, Jimmy ‘The Rev’ Sullivan, was always one of our biggest inspirations. With ‘A Little Piece Of Heaven’, he combined classic metal and film music together. You can even hear some musical theatre influences in there. Mr Bungle meets Metal. Awesome!
Bring Me The Horizon – Sleepwalking
Stylistically probably the closest to us, yet always one step ahead. We love the ‘Sempiternal’ album. It was a great mixture of their old stuff and the new electronic elements, which they then introduced more recently. Safe to say, a big influence on us.
Ólafur Arnalds – Þú ert jörðin
Music, especially instrumental music, can say things that you can’t even start to describe with words. In our opinion, this is one of the songs, that does exactly that.
Thirty Seconds To Mars – Closer To The Edge
We think that this song is one of the best on ‘This Is War’, however, the whole album strikes with excellence. From the songwriting to the production: One masterpiece. We listened to it countless times, and still can’t get enough of it.
‘December’ EP by River Becomes Ocean is released on June 21st.
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