Ocean Of Another’s new EP Loneliness Of My Kin dropped June 13, 2025 via Beton Music/MENART, bringing six tracks of modern metalcore that blend the raw pain of personal collapse with a scathing look at systemic decay. It’s not a concept record in the traditional sense, but it’s clear from the first note that these songs come from somewhere real—and that the band has no interest in glossing anything over.
The band’s origins trace back to a period of total upheaval. “Ocean Of Another started as a way for me to address and process a lot of my own personal trauma,” says the band’s founder and vocalist.
“The first drafts for the songs that later turned into Ocean Of Another were written by me in late 2020. I was going through a pretty rough divorce and had a lot of issues with alcohol and sleeping pills addiction, on top of my previous inability to process the crazy life I’d been leading up to that point.” When COVID hit, isolation forced a moment of reckoning. “I had a lot of free time and started demoing some songs. After a long time, I started writing lyrics too. As soon as I wrote the first lyrics, some dam broke and apparently there was a tsunami of things I wanted to write and speak out about.”
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What began as a private outpouring of pain soon transformed into a band, catalyzed by a turning point in the vocalist’s personal life.
“At that time I met my now wife and she helped me to process a lot of stuff and start therapy. She was also the main driving force that made me turn those demo tapes into a full-on band.” Friends who resonated with the material joined in, and the project grew into a shared experience. “This band and these songs helped them process a lot of their own stuff. It became a rally point for all of us to find a place where we can share our experiences and begin to heal.”
That spirit is baked into everything Ocean Of Another does, down to their mantra: “Become a drop in the Ocean Of Another.” A lyric from the EP’s title track makes the meaning clear:
To exist we really need to be perceived
So the only way to get to know yourself
Is to be truly seen through someone else’s eyes
Without disguise
Since their first single in September 2022, the band has released 18 songs. “The only way to get better at what you do is to do more of it. That’s why we are always writing songs, we never stop. Why would you stop doing something that you love? Especially if it helps us to heal and to connect, becoming better humans in the process.”
But this isn’t a one-man project. “Songwriting always was and still is a joint venture,” the band clarifies. “There’s this narrative floating around where you don’t need the whole band because it’s always one or two people doing all the work. Well that’s not the case with OOA. We all share the tasks.” Guitarists Zlatko Stefancic and Josip Pilipic handle music production, drummer Robert Ban Bebek creates all graphic design and visuals, and the whole band tackles marketing, social media, driving, merch printing, and shipping. “Whatever can be kept in-house and done DIY, we do it.”
The new EP reflects this hands-on ethos. Loneliness Of My Kin explores the human condition amid the spiritual suffocation of late-stage capitalism. “We are firm believers that the change starts small. It starts from individual level and it scales up from there. That’s why we try to tackle both the themes of climate change, war, capitalism, as well as personal trauma, heartbreak, toxic relationships, addiction. If you get to know yourself truly and fully, no one can control you through fear.”
The EP opens with No Time Left to Borrow, a direct strike at the system’s indifference. “We are finally learning that the wrong Amazon is burning.” Behind that line is despair, fury, and disillusionment.
“Our future is being devoured by CEO boards for the sake of shareholders and their dividends. This story has been repeated thousands of times but apparently not loud enough.” The video for the track is graphic by design: “There was no intention to glorify violence. Just the opposite—we made it so gut wrenching and brutal to showcase that violence begets more violence. But there’s a catch—what are you supposed to do when violence is the only tool you have left to communicate with an oppressive system that tries to enslave you and destroy you?”
The title track Loneliness Of My Kin turns inward, questioning how we navigate loneliness, death, and meaning. “There is an inherent loneliness that we carry around within ourselves as a species,” the band says. “Best case scenario, that loneliness pushes us to connect… But that loneliness can also be a wound that never closes.” The song takes a philosophical bent, referencing Schopenhauer’s idea that “man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.” Layers of grief, survival, and existential inquiry make it one of the most emotionally complex moments on the record.
CTRL+S examines toxic cycles—relationships, substance abuse, self-harm—and the roots beneath them. “There’s a deep longing for love underneath it all… Some of us have never felt true love and that leaves a gaping hole that we sometimes try to fill with whatever we can.” The band doesn’t offer easy answers, but points toward clarity through recognition: “Sometimes we need to let people, habits, and relationships go. We can’t hold on to them if the only thing we get in return is pain.”
Make Me Disappear cuts into the tension between identity and change. “Our personality is formed through conditioning and repetition… Change and healing isn’t nice and neat most of the time, it is violent and exhausting.” The track leans into this chaos, urging listeners to embrace deconstruction as part of becoming. “You need to accept yourself as is and stop trying to destroy yourself just because you are changing or feel the need to change.”
Overload returns to love, not as romance, but as the core need that shapes us. “Sometimes love can hurt us… but what if we are truly able to process all the hurt and appreciate it for what it truly is—a living proof of the depths of our love?” The song moves from sorrow to release. “At the end of the song we heal and let go and are ready for a new love. Love isn’t a finite resource.”
Closing track This High Makes Me Feel Alive stares down a society numb to itself. “We need to chase highs of any kind to feel alive and validated,” the band says. “Society pushes us into apathy and then scorns us if we try to get out of that apathy with means that aren’t state sanctioned.” Drug use becomes a metaphor for societal failure. “Why do we condemn drug users? They are a direct consequence of the system that did not care for them… Now they are trapped in their own echo chamber and the only thing reverberating in there is their own pain.”
The band doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but they refuse to be silent. “It is becoming blatantly obvious that the game is rigged and we are all waking up to the fact that the system is failing us,” they write. “The world that we live in is turning into a dystopia because it is being run by a ludicrous set of capitalist power-hungry maniacs that have no regard for anyone other than themselves.”
Instead of retreating into despair, Ocean Of Another insist on holding space for humanity. “We should strive for Star Trek future, not Blade Runner, if you ask me.” Their intention isn’t alarmist. “We write about these topics not as a way to be the guy with the ‘end is nigh’ cardboard sign on the street corner… We are trying to remind both you and ourselves that this life is wonderful, magnificent, and unique and it should be praised and enjoyed.”
Loneliness Of My Kin is an open wound, an invitation, and a mirror. “That makes us human and that is the biggest connection that we all share… Become a drop in the Ocean Of Another.”
