Dead to Fall finished their 10 year career on May 24th 2009 at the Metro Chicago with 10 members throughout their history performing. Matt Matera, Justin Jakimiak, Antone Jones, Timothy Java, Logan Kelly, Chad Fjerstad, Phil Merriman, Bryan Lear, Dan Craig and Jonathan Hunt played to a crowd of over 1,000 fans one last time that night. It was a beautiful thing to be a part of.

Oceano’s ability to encode such transmission within the framework of tight, taught, and technical heavy music remains a key to their success since 2006. Over the years, the group has ignited a diehard fan base. Picking up where critically acclaimed 2015’s ‘Ascendants’ and 2017’s ‘Revelation’ left off, the band expands their patented deathcore punch with brutal heaviness and moments of unrelenting technicality and precision in their newest single, “Mass Produced”. Oceano utilizes thought-provoking lyricism that continues to elevate them within the landscape of heavy music, a key to their success over the past decade.

“Well, here’s some weirdness for you all. I have been using the “Handle” BlueOx/(BlueOxMN) where the other is already taken,) since about 1995 as a chat room name/online ID. Why? I am from Bemidji, I’m a big clumsy guy (ox), and Babe the Blue Ox is a statue of iconic presence in the center of my hometown. I also have bluish colored skin being a super pale Irish American type guy, and I am Gay and like men who look like Paul Bunyan, so the name is a great fit for me.

It seems that some time in the last few years a very hardcore metal band came along in MN and started calling themselves Blue Ox. That’s all fine, and I haven’t yet had any contact from them or issues regarding the name, so all is good. I think its a bit weird to name a furiously scorching metal band after a Big Sappy Blue Ox, I mean, look at the classic Disney Film some time and you’ll see Babe is a lover and all about nature, not exactly the Icon of CHAOS one would normally use to christen your blistering angst filled rock aka: Death Metal/Black Metal. Sure, Babe and Paul get into playful wrestling matches and smash entire areas of the North into different natural features now seen today. So I guess Babe could be seen as a Childlike manifestation of terrible natural forces, so in that context Babe is ‘sort of’ metal like.

I checked out their MySpace page, and they seem to be quite a good local band in this genre. They have HUGE numbers on their page for plays, so I’ll give ’em props and assume they must be pretty well liked. More power to them, but if they think I am going to stop being the person Blue OX because they called their band Blue Ox, they have another thing coming. I had the handle in active use when these guys were not yet old enough to drive, and it’s MINE!!! I will also state that I totally dislike the style of music they are into, but they are DAMN good at it. I play guitar and these guys scorch and howl like a Rhesus Monkey geeked on meth in a woodchipper. Their posted recordings are very well produced, it is really hard to be that loud and distorted, and to get it to come through as clearly in a recording as they did. I produce my own stuff which is certainly way milder by comparison, and I fully appreciate that their studio work is seriously good.

Rock on Blue Ox, but I’m keeping my handle.”

Noise for the end