German futurepop duo Rotersand have opened their 25th-anniversary year with Merging Oceans / Train, a four-track single out on 16 October 2026 through Metropolis Records in North America and Trisol in the rest of the world. It is the first of several anniversary releases the band has planned.
The idea is to join both ends of the story. Merging Oceans goes back to the very beginning: this is a remastered 2001 demo of the song that gave its name to the band’s debut EP in 2003. It was inspired by a newspaper article about a sailor who set out to navigate every ocean aboard an old wooden ship.
Train comes from the other end, from last year’s album Don’t Become The Thing You Hated. It first appeared on the limited CD edition in August 2025 and reached digital platforms that October. Singer Rascal Nikov calls it by far the most personal song on the record: it deals with the early death of his mother and a recurring childhood nightmare about a train he could never get off, a trauma he only managed to put behind him in his late forties.
Here the song gets three new treatments: a 6:13 Extended version, a 5:31 Rework – Club and a 7:15 Rework. The 5:11 demo of Merging Oceans opens the set.
Rotersand today are Rascal Nikov on vocals and electronics and Krischan J. E. Wesenberg on electronics. They call their sound industrial pop, built from EBM and futurepop with a club edge. After the debut album Truth Is Fanatic in 2003 came Welcome to Goodbye, 1023 and a long run on Trisol, tours with Assemblage 23 and Covenant, and most recently Don’t Become The Thing You Hated in August 2025.
The anniversary will be celebrated on stage too. The band’s next home gig is at Kulttempel Oberhausen on 18 December 2026, with Morphose and Shosta as special guests.
Merging Oceans / Train on Bandcamp – https://rotersand.bandcamp.com/album/merging-oceans-train
Merging Oceans / Train on Apple Music – https://music.apple.com/us/album/merging-oceans-train-ep/6815888081
Rotersand on Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/artist/0zUDeBCtajKzgNJTeWQiNi
Rotersand official site – https://rotersand.net/
Side-Line news – https://www.side-line.com/rotersand-merging-oceans-train/
About Author
