The Ocean announce their massive two-part return, four years in the making. This November 2nd, Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic will be released through Metal Blade, with Phanerozoic II to follow in 2020. The band now exclusively premiere a nine-minute epic track, "Permian: The Great Dying", available for streaming below.

Explains guitarist and primary songwriter Robin Staps: "About 90% of all life on Earth was wiped out during this mass extinction event at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago. The most probable scenario is that The Great Dying was caused by increased volcanic activity inducing a global warming of about five degrees, which led to widespread ocean anoxia and the release of large amounts of methane gas from shallow seabeds into the atmosphere. This fast release of methane, a greenhouse gas, caused even further warming."

All of this occurred long before humanity appeared on the map, yet the effects of this global warming cannot be ignored. Says Robin, "There is no reason to assume that the results of the current human-caused warming would not be, at best, similarly devastating. The same increase in global temperatures that happened over the course of at least 150,000 years at the end of the Permian is likely to happen in just a few hundred years now. Looking at the five mass extinction events during the Phanerozoic eon reminds us that even without human impact, Earth has the power and potential to wipe out humanity in its entirety, at any given moment in time."

Source:	metalblade.com
Band profile:	The Ocean