Ocean Machine: Biomech is the second studio album by Canadian musician Devin Townsend, originally released as Biomech under the name Ocean Machine. The album was released in July 1997 via Townsend's label, HevyDevy Records. Background Material for Ocean Machine: Biomech had been around since the time Devin Townsend was touring with Steve Vai in support of Sex & Religion, with some tracks, such as "Funeral", "Regulator" and "The Death of Music", stretching back to Townsend's days with Noisescapes. The album's basic tracks of guitar, bass and drums were recorded in The Factory Studios in Vancouver during the same time Rob Halford recorded there the Voyeurs album of his band Two. Due to Townsend's discontent with the sound, in September 1996, he took the recorded material with producer Daniel Bergstrand to Málaga, Spain, to re-record the guitars, drums, and re-amp the bass. Torrential rains were storming the seacoast of Spain at that time, which prevented them from taking any decent recording of the drums. As a result, the sample for the snare drum on the album is actually taken straight from the beginning of "Sad but True" by Metallica. Due to Townsend's constant dispute with the studio owner, who kept kicking him out of the studio every afternoon to party with his friends, one of them being then rising movie star Antonio Banderas, Townsend then refused to pay the studio bill, which resulted in him being denied access to the master tape by the studio owner. Frustrated by that, Townsend eventually decided to sneak in the studio with Bergstrand at 3 A.M. to make a copy of the master tape, accidentally leaving out the song Ocean Machines there, thus the song exists only in demo quality. Music Ocean Machine: Biomech featured a mix of hard rock, ambient, and progressive metal. The album was the follow-up to the critically acclaimed City by Townsend's extreme metal band Strapping Young Lad. Townsend viewed Strapping Young Lad as a "little project" that he considered a "parody" and not the intended focus of his music, but lamented that Ocean Machine, which he described as "the music that was really close to me," was largely dismissed upon its release. The album opens with a reciting of a poem from 19th century English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Track 7, "Voices in the Fan," ends with an excerpt of the madrigal "Giovane donna il suo bel volto in specchio"