Berlin-based experimental post-metal outfit The Ocean will release their new album on November 2. The release will be the first half of a two-part epic. Phanerozoic II is expected to be released in 2020.

Today (September 5) The Ocean dropped "Permian," the closing track from Phanerozoic I, the band's seventh full-length. Hear the song, and pre-order the album, here. A press statement describes the release as "a really extensive dive into dystopian prog as well as geology -- in this case, the evolution and diversification of life during the Phanerozoic eon, and the destruction of it during five mass extinction events."

Regarding "Permian," guitarist Robin Staps draws parallels between mass extinction and current environmental scenarios. “When you hear the term 'mass extinction', everyone thinks of meteors and dying dinosaurs... but what happened at the end of the Permian was not related to any pieces of rock falling from the sky,” Staps said. "The most probable scenario is that 'The Great Dying' was caused by increased volcanic activity which caused a global warming of about 5 degrees, which then led to the release of large amounts of methane gas from shallow seabeds into the atmosphere.'

"Methane is a strong greenhouse gas and caused further warming in a loop effect," he continued. "We are now looking at an increase of temperature by about 4 degrees by the end of the century, and the former worst-case scenario has now become the proclaimed goal. The same increase in global temperatures which happened at the end of the Permian over the course of several hundreds of thousands of years is very likely to happen in just over 100-200 years now.”

Phanerozoic I is the follow-up to 2013's double-CD Peligial, an expansive, adventurous excursion that featured one disc with lyrics and a second disc featuring instrumental versions of the same songs. Since then, The Ocean was featured on 2015's Transcendental, a split EP with Japanese post-rock group Mono.

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