On their seventh album, German experimental metal band The Ocean trace the rise and fall of life on Earth across 250 million years. Capturing both the beauty and the horror of the time before dinosaurs, Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic moves from an eerie electronics-and-strings instrumental that evokes the birth of the planet’s biodiversity (“The Cambrian Explosion”) to a crushing finale that signifies the prehistoric world’s mass extinction (“Permian: The Great Dying”). Despite the abstract concept, the lyrics are deeply affecting, centered around humanity’s place on a planet older than most can fathom. The music is always visceral, ranging from melodic sludge (“Cambrian II: Eternal Recurrence”) to soulful prog-metal (“Silurian: Age of Sea Scorpions”).