Getting to Know… Ocean Encounters | Interview 🎤

For the exciting 82nd interview on The Musical Hype, Ocean Encounters delivers the rare interview where all band members provide responses.

“For the listener sitting at home or in the car, I’d like to think there’s unexpected turns in every song. A rap/trap section out of nowhere, a bluesy vocal riff, a breakdown suddenly coming around the corner to say hi.”  Great way to characterize the band that graces the 82^nd interview on The Musical Hype, Ocean Encounters.  The Tournai, Belgium metalcore collective is comprised of Thomas (vocals), Greg (guitar), Nathan (guitar), Pieter (bass), and Quentin (drums).  To reiterate the headline, one thing that makes this particular interview really cool is the fact that ALL members of the band provide answers to the questions! Yay! So, no need for any additional commentary – we’ll let the interview speak for itself! Without further ado, here is Getting to Know… Ocean Encounters: Interview #82!

Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with Ocean Encounters, what would you say makes you/your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?  

Pieter (bassist): Alright let’s get into it! For the listener sitting at home or in the car, I’d like to think there’s unexpected turns in every song. A rap/trap section out of nowhere, a bluesy vocal riff, a breakdown suddenly coming around the corner to say hi. Plus, we each have our own specific genres that we really enjoy, and you’ll find a bit of that in everything.

Thomas (singer): For the live shows, we try to get the audience involved in the show a little. Not just “how you doings [insert city]” or “make some noise.” We’ll pick out people and riff with them a little. Ask about places in the city we’re playing in and stuff. But mostly we want to get them moving. Once a few people are moving a bit, then it’s a party. Even just an enthusiastic head-bob is all we need to be happy.

Awesome! Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did Ocean Encounters form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

Quentin (drummer): Well, I used to have a live music bar. But the town we’re from (Tournai) has had a pretty serious decline in cultural/social interest. Back in the 80s, people used to flock from all around to come to the shows here in town! But for some reason in the last 10-15 years things have gone down. Anyway, Greg used to pop by during the day and we’d jam in the back, and soon kind of thought let’s bring some other people on board. We knew a singer and another guitarist and brought them on.

Pieter: Yeah, that’s a funny story. I was a teacher in town at the time, and one of my last year/senior students approached me one day, and said she knew someone who had formed a band and was looking for a bassist and asked if I played bass. Well I had a bass guitar laying around, and I loved metal, so I thought why not!

Greg (guitarist): Yeah, and you came over speaking almost no French, and us speaking only shitty school-English hahaha! That was interesting. But yeah, we showed you a few songs and by the end of that first practice we had 2-ish songs pretty much down. And the rest is history.

Nathan (guitarist): Early on, the goal was just playing shows. We didn’t really think about actually pursuing any bigger than that yet. And now we have an album, and almost had a small tour on its feet before this whole pandemic thing happened.

Let’s talk more about goals.  Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Quentin: The essence of the goal hasn’t changed. We want to compose songs and play them live for people. The only things that’s changed is how spread out the people we want to play in front of, are (wow that sentence was crazy hahaha). At first, it was just our town. Now, we want to try and get it into the neighboring countries.

Thomas: Right! The goal now is all about getting a tour on its feet. Multiple weeks, a few different countries. We have no disillusions as to what it takes to go on tour for a while. Cramped in a crappy van weeks at a time, eating crappy food, sleeping in sketchy places etc. But we all want exactly that. Play the show, pack up the van, drive, unload, play, reload, drive, unload, play etc. Damn it, we want that so bad.

Pieter: And we almost had it! We had the beginnings of a few dates coming together, and then it all kinda came to a screeching halt. But we’re all about keeping the momentum alive until we can do a few shows again. Me, personally, the goal is to get an album/tour/album/tour engine going. I’d love to spend a year writing, a year touring, continuously.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

(all collectively laugh a little)

Greg: we’re all over the place. From blues and folk to deathcore to rap to pop punk. But I think there’s a few that have made it into the collective favorite playlists a few times.

Quentin: Yeah for sure. Betraying the Martyrs holds a special place in my heart. We also drove Boris (the drummer) home once after a festival which was awesome!

Pieter: I’m the blues/folk guy. You can hear it in a few of the chorus sections in the songs, ha-ha! But also, anything from Blink 182 to Lamb of God can get me going.

Nathan: My inspirations are black. Like my soul (laughs hard). No but I definitely love to throw in a good sweep pick in there sometimes. 

Ah, the fun stuff.  What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance?  Feel free to be creative.

Thomas: Murphy has dropped [through] and whipped out his law on the table every now and then. Especially this one show in our hometown. There’s a musical festival every year with stages all around town. We were so hyped because we had the closing slot, on the last day of the festival, on one of the more popular stages. For weeks we were looking forward to it. And then it started.

Quentin: We had just started playing with an in-ear monitoring system with a metronome. Which requires it be plugged into the sound mixing board. Now the sound engineer had a tough time figuring out exactly where to plug it in as he hadn’t ever used that type of board before. So, during soundcheck our monitor-track got plugged into the main sound system and so the whole crowd just heard CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK over and over until he figured it out. Which, of course, put us 10 minutes late.

Greg: But it wasn’t over! We’re finally done with sound check and so we run off stage to go grab our stage-attire, and someone had locked the door. So, we decide fuck it, let’s go. We get halfway through one of the first songs things started sounding weird. The room the guitars had been in pre-show had AC, so was pretty cold. Outside it was July so easily 27ºC [~81ºF]. And the heat plus the playing just sent it all out of whack. So, we played half a song out of tune.

Pieter: Yep and then halfway the show one of my strings broke. A bass string. CRACK. Done.

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?  

Nathan: One of our favorites to play live was a song called “Kraken.” The end had this great part where everyone could just scream “Release! The Kraken!!” a few times. And we always got the crowd going with that one which was awesome. Never recorded it properly though.

Thomas: Then, another one of my favorites that we put on our first EP was a song called “Clock.” It really had a bunch of everything. And the breakdown is one of the favorite ones we’ve had in any song. 

Pieter: I also really enjoy the one we chose for our single off our latest album. It’s called “Disappoint”. I remember coming up with the initial riff one morning and kinda just threw it down. Before I knew it was 9 hours later and I had most of the song fleshed out. Then the guys all came in and added stuff to it etc. We didn’t initially want it as one of our singles, but the guys at the studio we were in were getting really excited by it when they were working on it, so we decided to go for it. And we’re really happy we did.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?  

Pieter: I’m still a teacher haha! My students are always surprised when they first find the vlog on YouTube and stuff. Oh yeah! We have a vlog on YouTube haha! We put one out every 2 weeks to show people a bit of how we do things. Also, helps in getting them to feel more involved when they come to shows and stuff.

Greg: I have a full back tattoo that’s a tableau of the Lord of The Rings. Sauron and the Black Tower and the ring and Frodo and stuff. Almost done. Butt crack to my neck.

Quentin: I’d also say that Pieter didn’t speak a lick of French when he came to the band. I still don’t know how we made that one work in the early days.

Closing this thing out, what is you/your band currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.   

Thomas: 100% the album. There’s a solid 2-ish years of work that went into that thing. And we’re SO glad it’s out there for everyone to listen to. Funnily enough with this whole COVID thing we’ve been crazy productive. We half ¾ of a new album worth of material already. So, stay tuned new things might be coming sooner than you think 🙂

Quentin: There’s also a bunch of new merch coming, and we’re hoping to move things online so you can shop for it there. For now, feel free to send us a PM on Facebook or Instagram and we’ll see what we can do! We’ve got shirts, CDs, keychain/bottle-openers and of course some free stickers for everyone. 

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward. 

Ocean Encounters, socials & such:

Photo Credits: Ocean Encounters, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype; Icons made by https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik (Freepik)