Ocean Grove Take Us Into Their 'ODDWORLD', Track-By-Track

For fans of Ocean Grove, it’s been a long two-and-a-half year wait for a new record, but with the release of ODDWORLD, they’ll agree the wait has been more than worth it.

Arriving today (November 22nd), ODDWORLD is the Victorian outfit’s fourth album, their first since 2022’s Up In The Air Forever, and their first since released via their own ODDWORLD Records. Needless to say, it’s a big deal in their musical story, and one that has been a long time in the works.

Comprising vocalist Dale Tanner, bassist/vocalist Twiggy Hunter, and drummer/producer Sam Bassal, Ocean Grove have long blended a unique mix of elements of nu metal, hardcore, and alternative rock to craft their own singular sound. Now, ODDWORLD invites the listener into a world that is the band in their purest form.

“It says it all in the title: ODDWORLD. This is Oddworld Music. Period," Tanner says of the album. "We’ve curtailed the attempts of outsiders who’ve tried to define our sound and pigeonhole our art for over a decade now.

“This is Ocean Grove’s signature-defining record, the benchmark from which all future sounds project and reflect. A journey back to our experimental, unconventional roots whilst forging full-blast into a new and fearless era.”

To celebrate the album’s release, Bassal has been kind enough to share with us a track-by-track rundown on each of the tracks on the record, reflecting on their creation and how they inform the wider album.

01. OG FOREVER

OG FOREVER is the nostalgic starting point for me of this whole record because that was our live intro in 2017. We used to walk out to that intro which Running Touch made during our live shows around 2017 and 2018. For the people who are long-time OG fans – they’ll know. They’ve heard it before. And from day one, I knew I wanted that to open the record because it kicks off the whole point of Oddworld, Oddworld is meant to be the five of us, and this track captures what Ocean Grove is.

I didn’t even change anything for it, it’s literally the exact same MP3. And I’m pretty sure Running Touch’s computer hard drive disintegrated many years ago, and what we have left is what you hear in this intro. It’s just an MP3 bounce that I had to re-master.

02. CELL DIVISION

CELL DIVISION was one of the first heavy tracks that I wrote for the record. And it was also the last song that we finished because we couldn't get it right and we kept going back and forth. Luke [Holmes] and I sat in the studio for days trying to work out what to do to get that song over the line. Twiggy [Hunter] gave us a really great chorus, and the chorus stayed in existence for a long time.

Every single other part of that song was being chopped and changed until the very end, except for Twiggy's chorus. So, even though it was one of the first songs I ever wrote for the record, unfortunately it was the last one that we finished, I just couldn't get it to where we needed it. But I think it ended up pretty cool.

03. FLY AWAY

We were meant to release FLY AWAY in June last year, we actually sat on it for about a year because pretty much everything to do with the band was changing, from label to management; everything. So we just had to sit on it, wait for a few things to line up and for everything to work out.

The final version of FLY AWAY actually felt very old by the time we actually got to release it! But it’s probably one of my favourite songs. FLY AWAY is definitely the definitive Ocean Grove heavy song, it’s got everything about Ocean Grove's groove and bounce and steeze, I'd like to imagine, all in the one song.

A fun fact for this one is that I had to have it mixed and mastered to meet a certain deadline – that never happened! We sat on it for a year, but we still had to record vocals. It was like, two in the morning and my neighbours love making a noise complaint. So we drove in my car to the car park of a fish and chip shop down the road from my house. And in my car at two or three in the morning, Twiggy and Dale [Tanner] just touched up any lines that needed it.

That was the only way we could finish the song in time, having them sit in my car and record some shit vocals! And to this day, I don't even know what stayed and what didn't, honestly.

04. STUNNER

I have to say, STUNNER is probably my favourite song on the record, I wish it was a single. We usually write all of our material at my house, me sort of bouncing music and then sending bounces and demos around. But for this record, just for a small period of time, we wanted to go away and capture everyone's time because we don't usually get to be in the same room together. Dale, Twiggy and I are quite often together, but we aren’t always together with Luke and Running Touch. 

So for this, we were like, “all right, let's book a trip!”. We hired an AirBnb in the middle of nowhere, in a town called Bena, and we set up a studio there. At the very start, Luke was playing the bass, and the fun little lick is Running Touch’s. He just bounced that, and was like, “could we do anything with this?”. And I was like, “dude, send me this right now!”. He was downstairs at the kitchen table, I was upstairs in the studio, and he sent me that. Then I started to make a bit of a song from it, the first half of it before it gets a bit heavier. 

This also has the first [Justin] Timberlake/Pharrell Williams/The Neptures-type moment, which is really big for me personally with my taste in music, and also in Running Touch’s taste in music. We’ve sprinkled some of that sound before in songs like Ask For The Anthem, and we also have a song on Up In The Air Forever called HMU which has that Timberlake/Neptunes sort of sound. Once I’d had a play with it, Running Touch came upstairs, laid a really, really shit demo scratch vocal one take over it; and we kept it! That’s what’s at the start of STUNNER, that’s Running Touch’s voice. 

We wanted to use this moment to also infuse Timberlake with 1999/2000 nu metal-style choruses, which is fucking awesome. And I say Timberlake, because the Justified album is “the” sound of a certain part of The Neptunes’ sound, and I also find that sound works really well with nu metal. Weirdly, they’re not that far off! If you swap out vintage keyboard sounds for heavy guitars, it works the same way, and can blend together. STUNNER also gives our first “riff” moment on the record. There’s a big riff in this song.

05. RAINDROP

RAINDROP initially started because Twiggy has a habit of sending me videos from five years ago, or just from a random portion of time that he’s just found on his phone gallery. And sent me this beautiful video of him sitting on the ground playing an acoustic guitar in some long grass, and he plays a very sad version of the verse. It's just Twiggy, an acoustic guitar, and him singing very quietly: “Every day I stand alone, catching raindrops from my own eyes”. And I heard that and I went, “that is so beautiful”.

But at the time, I had just downloaded some new samples from this hardcore techno pack. I do a thing every so often where I just browse some samples and see what's fresh that I could use to start some stuff, or to just have some fun and make some beats. So I found this stuff – and I just somehow ended up making RAINDROP from that. 

I made this electronic rock version of Twiggy's super sad song, sent it back to him, and he was like, “dude, what on earth?!” (laughs). “But this is sick”. This is probably the one song that's actually stayed the same since its initial demo, it didn't really change at all. And then when we went to Bena on that writing trip, Luke had some really great last minute additions for the song. We did all the BVs and it became what it is!

06. NO OFFENCE DETECTED

NO OFFENCE DETECTED came from a little demo that I’d written, I want to say in 2018. It was just a little piece of music that I intended to eventually turn into a full song. We would've been trying to start a song using that at first. But then we just were like, “you know what? It would be hell classic if we did this as a sort of skit”. A lot of early 2000s hip hop records had these skit things, it’s meant to be just a vibey piece of music to break up in the middle point of the record.

We do it live, and every time we play it live, I feel like I’m in prime Korn years, like: yes! We’re playing legit nu metal right now! A funny fact for this one, there’s a skit script that’s being said, it’s mixed very low so you can’t always make out what Twiggy’s saying. But it’s Twiggy’s voice. 

We went to Kmart and bought $10 kids’ walkie talkies that look so bad. They have a sticker on them with a fake screen to show that it's on – that says it all! I put my microphone on the table and then put the walkie talkie on top of the microphone, then Twiggy went to the back of the room and was talking into his walkie talkie.

Script-wise, I think the vibe of what he's saying is that the police have found a car of three people, aka us, driving three dead bodies in the boot – which is also us. And then Twiggy takes down the cop and says, “you are now listening to Oddworld Music”. And then the next song starts!

07. MY DISASTER

We had FLY AWAY already in the bag, but we decided that we needed a very heavy, riffy song; but also something that could showcase the clean singing/catchy chorus side of Ocean Grove. I think FLY AWAY’s incredibly catchy, but it’s not a Dale clean-sung chorus or anything like that, it’s more of an aggressive style of chorus. When we got to MY DISASTER, I very quickly put an instrumental demo together for it.

I want to say that I had a version of it before we got to the Bena AirBnb, but it was in Bena where this song really came together. The boys were eating dinner one night, and I just quickly ran upstairs to the studio to hum out an idea, which was the chorus melody, or a version of it at least. All of a sudden this song had some life and I really, really wanted to work on it. So the boys finished dinner, came upstairs and at the end of the night, we just worked on this song. 

The majority of what was done in that session is what MY DISASTER actually became. Running Touch was downstairs working on his own stuff, but Luke and Twiggy were behind me sitting on the couch shouting feedback, and writing lyrics and changing melodies, all those sorts of things. And I want to say that Dale was to my left playing Mario Kart on his Switch. That was MY DISASTER! I think MY DISASTER has a very nostalgic feeling to it, the chorus feels a bit like an older kind of emo-styled chorus mixed with some awesome heaviness.

08. LAST DANCE

It’s definitely weird to say, but I can listen to LAST DANCE, having written it, and say that I can so easily cry to that song. LAST DANCE was written quite a while before the album was in progress. I’d written it as a solo song, or just as something for my own catalogue. It was a moment, or a feeling, of music one day for me where I was like, “okay, I really needed to get that out”.

It had a sad sound, but I never wrote lyrics to it at the time. But, as all good songwriters will do, they’ll hum their melodies or record a melody that has very shitty placeholder lyrics. It was very important to me that when I brought the song to the band, I knew that the boys could write lyrics that felt like what I was saying in my demo, and that they could shape the words around the nonsense I was saying when I did my demo. 

The beautiful thing about LAST DANCE is that I think you can listen to this song and interpret your own story to suit the song – which is what I wanted. I have my own interpretation of what this song means to me and what the emotion brings. And I hope for the listener, they can listen to this song and apply the feelings they're feeling to suit any part of their life, whether it’s one thing or the whole shebang that life gives us.

Even though it does feel super personal, I still think you can apply these lyrics to any situation, whether it’s loss or love, even in a way that is totally positive. The lines at the end of the chorus are “I know I won’t let you go” – that can be taken in a positive light too. 

LAST DANCE was the last song that I finished mixing for the album, and it was the last song that I hit export on to just completely finish the project. Once I hit export on this song – ODDWORLD was done. The album was finished. It was like four in the morning because, as always, the day the album's due is the day that I finish mixing it. And it's always submitted two fucking hours late to deadline, or just after.

But I remember it so clearly, I think because of the stress of having to have everything done, and this being the last song, I had my headphones cranked, absolutely cranked. I stood up out of my chair with my headphones on just listening to this song, almost feeling like a listener for the first time. 

I’ve got no shame in saying I was just bawling my eyes out, both from the emotion that I’d just finished the record, but also because I'm so proud of this song. This song was making me feel things, and that was my ODDWORLD ending moment. It’s definitely one of my favourites, and I also have to say it wouldn’t sound this way if Dale didn’t just absolutely kill that vocal. LAST DANCE would never sound as good as it does if it wasn’t Dale singing it. It’s incredible.

09. SOWHAT 1999

SOWHAT 1999 is a really fresh song. I wanted another heavy song in the mix, and it starts with that rock side of nu metal. And it's got a Beastie Boys sort of boom bap-style verse, which we've never done before. We gave that spot to Twiggy to rap over, and it is just a little bit cheeky, it's fun.

I would say this one falls into the category of being a staple Ocean Grove nu metal song. If you want an easy listening-style song from Ocean Grove that is fun, but still hard and upbeat – you could probably put SOWHAT 1999 on and it’ll tick all the boxes of things you probably would want to hear from Ocean Grove. Big emphasis on the fun for this one.

10. OTP (feat. New Babylon & Adult Art Club)

OTP, for me, was always going double down on the Oddworld collective, of us changing the dynamic from being some normal band that has to play a certain amount of songs that has only got the people that are in the band on a track and things like that. This was an existing beat, or Adult Art Club song that Running Touch and the other individual in Adult Art club had made. And I thought to myself, “what would be so fresh in this moment that I think people would really enjoy?”. And it was: if I gave Luke his own moment to shine. And so the last track on ODDWORLD is an Adult Art Club song with Luke spitting bars on it. 

For this, I also just ultimately wanted a fucking hard and cool song. I remember the first time I heard that beat, I went, “this is so fresh! I want to hear it played out of a club PA system real loud”. It gives Luke his moment to do what he does best, and the song really captures that. For me, as good as making an album is, it’s all just capturing time. It’s like: what did this group of people at this point in time think was good? And it exists forever. And I think it would be wrong to not give someone as talented as Luke an opportunity to take a fresh beat and spit all over it. 

There it is, it’s captured in the last track on the album. And it’s a nice bookend as well, with the start of the album being that 2017 live intro from Running Touch, and the last track is an electronic song from the same duo. The album goes by pretty fast. I probably should have put another song on it, but that’s life!

Ocean Grove’s ODDWORLD is out now.