By Jason Walker
Rings of Saturn are definitely a bit of an interesting, wacky and niche band within the deathcore scene. A band that focuses on extreme rhythm with hyper melodic sweep picking at super high-speed BPM, definitely a bit of an acquired taste but interesting nonetheless. No doubt I’ll be leaving with a bit of a ringing in my ears tonight and trying to start a moshpit in my sleep.
Brand Of Sacrifice walk on under a dark right light and my mate Cam remarks that someone’s bound to get killed by the looks. They kick off and despite the guitars being a little thin, they’re sounding heavy and frantic – some random guy walking past me audibly went “What the fuck?”. Their guy on vocals jumps between guttural vocals so low they’d register on the Richter scale all the way to shrill pig screams while the rest of the band plays rhythms that very rarely stay the same for more than a few seconds.
I’m stood here with a proper gurn on my features, and literally can’t do anything else given the absolute heaviness of these guys. The bass player also can’t seem to headbang low enough either, I swear his face was nearly touching the floor just now. Every song they play is an assault on the senses; if they’re not smashing some obscenely heavy riff out, they’re mixing it up with discordant runs up the neck. Only a short set for them tonight but I’m fairly sure their singer is the background noise that James Cameron heard in the Mariana Trench: terrifying.
Before Traitors are due to go on, you can clearly see a clearing in the middle of the audience; for those of you that don’t know, that means this sort of a pit is one where people are going to get hurt. With barely one note played, people are in the middle swinging arms and legs around in full pit ninja style. Admittedly this isn’t really my sort of thing, they’re clearly getting a good response from the audience with people shouting the lyrics right back at them.
I need to keep a bit of an eye out as some idiots are straight up trying to superman punch people on the edges with the whole crowd killing thing – not going to lie, I absolutely hate that, go take your frustration out on a punching bag. Overall, hasn’t done anything for me really, they’ve gone down well mind but it’s a hard pass for me.
After hearing a lot of good stuff about Enterprise Earth, I’m quite excited for them! They hit it straight into that lovely down tuned eight-string heavy-as-you-like stuff, excellent. An excellent mix of low, growly vocals, big fat low note rumbling with some wonderful discordant licks – I am definitely on board with this, it’s bloody obscene! They’ve got a great mix of atmospheric backing and just straight up face melting grooves, just the right stuff to get your gurn on to.
I also love the bass player sporting a Dingwall, I’m an unashamed sucker for how those things sound and the raw sound it’s got is doing an amazing job of complimenting the outrageously low guitar. The pit seems a lot more familiar to me now with the sea of thrashing heads and masses of hair to go along with it rather than people swinging their arms around. These guys really are cranking out some outrageous grooves and the audience are absolutely loving it! Admittedly I can’t understand a bloody word the singer’s doing, but that’s just deathcore innit? Smashing set though, loved it!
Rings of Saturn unsurprisingly use the theme to ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ as their walk on track with the crowd enthusiastically singing along to it, although slightly out of key. A moment later the guitars set in and the thunderous sound of their ridiculously fast playing fills the room. I wish the vocals were a bit louder mind as the rest of the band are way louder than the vocalist so you can kind of hear him but he’s very much behind the guitarists.
These guys really are a masterclass in insane technicality while maintaining extreme speed, even tiny breaks in between some of the guitarists’ chugs are filled in with a bunch of notes that last barely half a second. Hyper melodic in the extreme, even the chug riffs go through cycles of notes in such quick succession, jumping between several passages in quick succession. It’s easy to focus on the crazy stuff the guitarists do but they’re both backed by their absolutely insane drummer who is every bit as busy as they are but my god, the sound of his kit is huge and every bit of it is going through the floor, walls and the air itself to the point where my t-shirt feels like it’s shaking.
The more intense this set gets, the more bonkers the crowd gets. Rings of Saturn are ploughing through their set with barely a break in between songs, it’s a non-stop onslaught of how many chugs and notes you can fit into a 40-minute set. Every song is smattered with a mix of discordant arpeggios, tapped melodies, outrageous sweep picking, insane shredding and some good old-fashioned breakdowns to spice it up a bit. Rings of Saturn are one of those bands that you should witness at least once, even if just for the pure “what the fuck?” factor, everyone in this band is insanely skilled and they like to show this off a lot. Think I’ll need to pop a couple of Ibuprofen before bed after this show… bloody hell.
- The tour continues at the Key Club in Leeds tonight (Friday 28 February) and finishes at the Underworld in Camden tomorrow (Saturday 29 February).
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