German post-metal collective The Ocean returns to Bulgaria on December 4, 2026. The concert is at the Sredets Culture House in Sofia, doors open at 7 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. Special guests are Belgian psychedelic progressive metallers Psychonaut, and the night opens with Hungarian dark folk project The Devil's Trade.

Few bands would survive the upheavals The Ocean went through between 2022 and 2025. Two thirds of the line-up that recorded the beloved "Phanerozoic I" (2018), "Phanerozoic II" (2020) and "Holocene" (2023) left the group. After the emotional end of that era at Hellfest, only founder, guitarist, composer and lyricist Robin Staps, long-time bassist Mattias Hägerstrand and new drummer Jordi Farré, known from Crippled Black Phoenix, remained.

Instead of an ending came a new beginning: "Solaris", the twelfth studio album and probably the most ambitious work of a 25-year career. Nearly 70 minutes of music inspired by the film of the same name by Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, about human consciousness, reality, technological progress and loneliness in an age of constant connection. A band that loses most of its line-up and answers with Tarkovsky rather than a safe, repetitive record deserves attention.

Tickets on bilet.bg cost 32 euros, roughly 1,970 denars.