In reading The Outlaw Ocean, we were shocked by how poorly our oceans are protected. The book clearly shows how government policies fail to protect the ocean, and how the government is making no effort to change those failing policies, either because they lack the resources or because they simply have no interest in creating law and order at sea. It’s alarming to see how the unstructured laws provide loopholes for all kinds of criminal mechanisms. 

At the same time, we found it important to note the hard work of NGOs like Sea Shepherd whose members, mostly made up of young people, risk their lives to protect the biodiversity of our oceans for future generations and bring back messages for the people on land about the criminality they’ve witnessed due to murky and obscure laws.

The first chapter brings all of this to light, which is why we used it as the base for our tracks. For us, the chase of the Thunder by members of Sea Shepherd is like a wild chase in an action film. It has moved us in our music making. We felt that our dark, energetic, and dramatic style of making sound matched the tone of this first chapter well. The calm beginnings, the increase in dramatic strings and orchestral units, and the accompaniment of the drums arouse stormy feelings of fear, astonishment, and respect—like a violent thunderstorm on the high seas. We named our EP “Mare Asperum,” the Latin translation for “The Stormy Sea.” The sea has always been considered a highly threatening element in almost all written cultures and it is often associated with the ideas of infinity, inexhaustibility, unfathomability of depth, loneliness, abandonment, exposure and unpredictability. In giving the EP this title, we wanted listeners to think deeply about the challenge and the uncertainty on our oceans.

Trias