Last I saw Ocean, Halloween 2004 or thereabouts, we sat around a table in the old Geno’s, just a week before they sold various and sundry possessions and packed up for a tour to Chicago. Once they reached the Windy City, they were to record with Sanford Parker, a producer with a solid name in the underground doom-rock genre the band inhabit. Important Records were helping out with the recording time, and Ocean had a slew of material they were ready to get on tape. And they did record it, getting four songs worth (a lot when each song is 20 minutes long). Of course, nothing of that session will appear on their debut record, Here Where Nothing Grows, which they’ll release with a show at the new Geno’s November 19.

Sometimes the best plans don’t turn out like you’d hoped. Sometimes everything you ever needed is right here in your backyard. Ocean ended up taking their material to Marc Bartholomew and his Bandsaw Recording (he’s done Conifer, the long-delayed Phantom Buffalo EP, and used to be the Skinny soundguy, among other resume items) and liking what they got there a sight better. Which is what counts, right? You can put any name you want in the liner notes, but if the engineer doesn’t get your sound the way you want it, what’s the point?

In a genre like this, where songs leisurely stretch out and yawn; where vocals enter after about four minutes, last 30 seconds, then return 10 minutes later; where it’s kind of expected you’ll listen to the record at least once really loudly in your headphones, the engineering is of paramount importance. So the guys in Ocean didn’t settle. They recorded it again. And now they’re happy.

Well, as happy as you can be when you’re playing doom rock. If the three songs listed in liner notes were broken down into suites and subtitles, I might be reminded of Yes’s more psychedelic years. Oh, and if the music was played twice as fast. For a largely instrumental album, you’ll find a paucity of individual instrumental heroics from players who know their instruments inside and out. It’s just not that kind of music. It’s much more about the tenor and feel of the presentation than it is about trying to impress.

Not that there aren’t impressive turns here. The slower a band plays, the harder it is to keep tight together, and the more obvious mistakes are. The drummer is the lynchpin. Will Broadbent, the original drummer, quit just after the Chicago sessions and was replaced by a Providence-based Troll. He didn’t work out and was so replaced with Eric Brackett, late of Adamo and Castle Bravo. In the long run, they should be all set. Brackett’s one of the more talented drummers in town, playing with an interesting open style, and is able on their debut to keep everyone in their paces.

In "First Reign," his frequent drum breakdowns keep giving the impression that something significant is going to happen – like, okay, here comes the song proper, the speed up you’re expecting – but it never really comes. Instead, a new element like a winter wind whipping through a deserted bell tower enters around the 4:30 mark, constituting not quite melody. The first vocals (by Candy) come in around 5:00 – deeply growled and in no way intelligible, but a nice change of pace and lending a personality to the track. Midway through some of the "singing," the guitar (Reuben Little and John Lennon, longtime Portland rock guitarists split duties) does lend a bit more melody, and quickens in time with the drums, but after the vocals stop so does much of the music, lapsing back into the intro.

It’s not heavy enough or precise enough to be hardcore or math rock; it’s sludgy and just as down in the mouth as "doom core" might indicate. Like staring into an oppressive darkness, the mind starts to highlight and make out the slightest of differences – is that a major chord? Then here comes a totally unexpected speed-up at the 12:40 mark, like they switched to double time, the guitars beating out a 3/3 high-speed waltz for about 30 seconds, before devolving yet again into the abyss of sloth.

If you were to try to parse out a narrative, it would have to involve the very water body from which Ocean take their name, as though some sentient entity was traversing the scary deeps and only intermittently coming upon anything at all on which to focus. Thus, the sound of rainfall at 18:30 is both appropriate and cool. Like our oceanic traveler has finally surfaced. I’m reminded of those scenes you seen in middle school of the earth forming, how first there was all this seismic activity, and all the world was lava, and then the rains came to fill up the holes and create the vast seas.

That’s how primal this music is, like the forces of nature, unrelenting and unexplainable and unpredictable. Where and why is totally irrelevant. With Ocean, I have genuinely no clue what’s coming next, or how they might have decided on it. Even if there weren’t anything else to speak for it, that would make this album worth having. Luckily, there’s plenty more speak for it – I just can’t always figure out what it’s saying.