About
Being as an Ocean is an American rock band from Alpine, California, formed in 2011. They have released five studio albums: Dear G-d..., How We Both Wondrously Perish, a self-titled album, Waiting for Morning to Come, released on 8 September 2017, and PROXY: An A.N.I.M.O. Story, released in 2019. How We Both Wondrously Perish was released in May 2014 and charted at number 57 on the Billboard 200 in the U.S.
The band's musical style has been described as post-hardcore and melodic hardcore. AllMusic writer Gregory Heaney characterised them as a "post-hardcore band with a melodic and plaintive sound punctuated by outbursts of aggression" while Indie Vision Music stated their music blended "melodic hardcore, Explosions in the Sky-esque atmospheric rock, and spoken word "talk music" similar to La Dispute, Listener, or MewithoutYou". Vocalist Joel Quartuccio has been noted for a "passionate vocal delivery" with his "mix of spoken word and traditional pained yelled/screamed vocals paint passionate tapestries". The addition of Connor Denis and Michael McGough to the line-up marked a transition in their style, while their first album Dear G-d... "showcased a lot of human emotion through its ultra-personal lyricism, How We Both Wondrously Perish unleashed much of its emotion in shining musicality, as the group tightened up their instrumentation and added new dynamics to their sound – the biggest being the addition of guitarist/clean vocalist Michael McGough".
The lyrics for their debut album, referred to as "heartfelt", talk about life experiences, emotions, ideas and conversations Quartuccio "had about G-d, hope, love, humility, strength, pain, depression, loss and Life". Throughout the later albums, these continue to be the principal inspiration for the lyrics. Although they are often considered a Christian band, they denied that, saying that they are "Christian people who love to write music" and would prefer not to be placed under the "Christian band" tag.
Some of the early influences to their sound were MewithoutYou, Sigur Rós, Oceana, Bring Me the Horizon, Listener, Verse, Comeback Kid, Underoath, Touché Amoré, and La Dispute. The band's name was influenced by a quote spoken by Mahatma Gandhi; "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty".