Ocean Sleeper Drop Danny Brown Cover Ft. Ocean Grove's Luke Holmes

Gippsland metalcore newcomers, Ocean Sleeper, released their first-ever music video this week and it was a cover song of Danny Brown's 'Smokin' And Drinkin'. As you do. Now, when the track and video premiered at Hysteria Mag, the band's vocalist Karl Spiessl spoke to the publication, saying that:

“It was one of the first songs we wrote together before Ocean Sleeper was even a thing. [Guitarist] Ionei and I have been writing for a while. Ionei records everything too. It was supposed to be our first release since most bands don’t do that for their first one. We wanted to make the film clip replicate the vibe of the song and if Danny Brown sees it, then sick!”

That's all well and good, but this song is a cover. So does the above quote mean that they wrote and recorded the instrumentation first and then just went 'Hey, let's turn this into a Danny Brown cover' and add in the track's vocals and lyrics? Or that it was always going to be a Danny Brown cover from the get-go? Who knows, but in any case, they nailed the vibe of the film clip, for better or for worse.

As far as the guest vocal part of Ocean Grove's Luke Holmes is concerned, it's easily the best part of the song. Whatever the reason may be, Holmes isn't actually in the film clip himself, and his parts are presented by a masked guy "acting out" the vocals parts. Unless Holmes was indeed that masked guy? Eh, it's not important.

As someone who loathes Danny Brown most of the time - 'DIP' wasn't half bad, though - I can safely say that this heavy cover of the hip-hop track is average as balls. So much so that I actually prefer the original track; something I never thought I'd say about Brown.

With their debut EP apparently due out next month and with the band set to drop another track before then, all I can say is god help us all. If you're up for it, you can find the band's two other songs, 'Breaking Free' here and 'Sewn Shut' here, which are there only other songs currently out, mind you.

Ocean Sleeper will be playing Unify Gathering 2017. I'm gonna chalk that up to them being from the same area as where the festival is being held, and the festival needed a local band to open. You can check out their rendition of 'Smokin' And Drinkin' below.