Heliocentric, the highly anticipated and incredibly daring new album from THE OCEAN is available now in stores, on iTunes, Amazon.com and every other digital and physical music retailer. To celebrate the album's release, The Ocean's Robin Staps has filmed short video clips that describe in detail the lyrical and musical concepts behind each song on Heliocentric. Those clips are live now on The Ocean and Metal Blade YouTube channels, as well as on MetalBlade.tv.

Go to this location to check them out.

The Heliocentric tracklist is as follows:

'Shamayim' (instrumental)

'Firmament'

'The First Commandment of the Luminaries'

'Ptolemy Was Wrong'

'Metaphysics of the Hangman'

'Catharsis of a Heretic'

'Swallowed by the Earth'

'Epiphany'

'The Origin of Species'

'The Origin of God'

Heliocentric can be previewed via 30 second instrumental clips, available now at this location.

The songs, art and lyrics of Heliocentric tell the story of the rise of the heliocentric world view - the idea that the earth revolves around the sun, and that the sun is stationary and at the center of the universe. Copernicus and Gallilei were the first popular ambassadors of this idea, although ancient greek astronomers like Aristarchus had already posited this theory centuries before.

The effects that this discovery had on Christian belief and occidental culture are at the base of The Ocean's Heliocentric album. Throughout the course of the album, the lyrics are orbiting around an astronomic and a philosophical/religious subject, whilst always keeping an essentially personal perspective.

Fans can now order Heliocentric as just the CD or in a CD/t-shirt package. Go here for details and prices. The packaging for Heliocentric is quite amazing, featuring a black digipak with silver foil and black embossed designs as well as tarot cards in place of the traditional CD booklet. There are a total of 9 tarot cards, each with its own artwork on one side and lyrics on the opposite side. A special vinyl box 2x LP edition with revolving sun and planet-dials will be available soon from pelagic-records.com.

Heliocentric has won the 'soundcheck' of Metal Hammer magazine and was awarded 'album of the month' by all editors.

To celebrate this, The Ocean had teamed up with Metal Hammer and Friction Fest for yet another special event. Robin Staps adds: "We will play a showcase gig at the famous White Trash in Berlin on Thursday, April 29th, premiering the Heliocentric material live in Germany. I will DJ for an hour or so after the gig and we will all be hanging out at White Trash, so come say hi and have a drink!"

This event will double as a warm-up gig for Friction Fest the following weekend, where The Ocean will perform a special set with an extended lineup including various classical musicians (May 7th).