It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks off we're trying hard to find meaning in the oddest monikers.
Let's be very clear about something. As a singer Rocks Off is not in favor of instrumental rock music. Rebecca Black's "Friday" is proof that the music industry is finally trying to replace singers with robots, and frankly we don't need a group like Columbus, Ohio, natives The End of the Ocean, who can actually play their instruments without a front man strutting among them adding to our inferiority complex.
Most instrumental jams just make us feel like we've missed out on a whole subset of the music world by never smoking pot, but The End of the Ocean actually brings a modern alternative sensibility and beauty to their music. What they coax from their amps is something that feels as epic as a Final Fantasy cutscene and as relevant as tonight's news.
We're digging it, is what we're trying to say.
But that name... The End of the Ocean? The end of the ocean is freaking land. You can't call a band "Land." That's an uppity cow, right there, and we'll have no part of it. Stupid, lousy no-singer-havers!
We put all the things we learned watching Navy SEALS to work and snorkeled our way onto their tour bus to demand where the hell the name came from.
"The idea of our band was born out of a concept about a journey through the ocean taken by a close-knit crew of people - shipmates," says bassist Bryan Yost. "Shipmates share the same anguish, elation and victories - it doesn't matter if they weather the same circumstances together at the same time - they all experience these things with and through each other.
"Most everybody experiences life this way. We wanted to capture the vastness of the ocean and the variance of emotions that a sea journey would entail if it were immortalized into a soundtrack."
Could it be? Could we have finally found a band whose name actually has some meaning to the music they were doing and the lifestyle they wished to live?
It seemed impossible, but that actually made some kind of damn sense. The music of The End of the Ocean does flow like the soundtrack to some kind sea opera... 'cept of course that operas have singers.
"Because of how big the ocean is and all of the secrets it holds, it can be paralleled to many things such as human nature, rise and fall of empires, war, mercy, grace, hate, love, life, death," says Yost. "We wanted to pick a band name that could be left open to the interpretation of the listener to decide for themselves what they feel and think when they listen to our music."
