Dingir

Rings of Saturn is the perfect portrayal of what's wrong with deathcore and so-called technical death metal nowadays.

The very first thing I notice, listening to any and all Rings Of Saturn track is the absolute lack of emotion in their music. It's blend, lifeless and mechanical. Mechanical is the keyword here. Somehow, with time it seems that we've lost the essence of death metal in this pseudo tech death metal/deathcore. Death metal is a genre that always left room for technicality by its very essence. The genre it seems, was designed in a way that left much room for musicians like Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse or Olivier Gabriel from Benighted to play more complex and difficult forms of death metal. But then, we have guys like Rings Of Saturn or the infamous Braindrill... and these guys... well, they know how to write and play technical stuff. So much that it seems to take the whole space in their song-writing process. Some bands use technicality to play music, while some use music to play technicality. And let's just say that these guys belong to the second group.

What makes their music lifeless, boring and mechanical is basically the fact that they have abandoned the essence of death metal, or just any kind of "extreme metal". The brutality, the aggressivity, the raw emotions... they should be felt in the music. To understand what I'm trying to explain, let's compare bands like Benighted with Rings Of Saturn. Benighted is the kind of band that will start, stop, break in the middle of a riff, change tempo quickly, change the general feeling of the track suddenly, etc. to make the listener feel something, to get some kind of emotion, some kind of ambiance to flow through. Rings Of Saturn, they start, stop, change the tempo, do a breakdown, start sweeping in the middle of a riff, etc. but it never seems to accomplish anything, for there is no variation, no depth, no emotion in their music. It feels just like if these guys use distortion, death growls, heavy breakdowns not for the ambiance and feeling it provides to music, but because that's just what tech death bands do. They are brutal, technical and they growl... but in the end... there is no hook, no sudden breakdown, no tempo change that will make you feel anything.

This record is a patchwork of random ideas thrown in together. Almost every single section could be taken and placed somewhere else and it would feel exactly the same. Let's take the track Immaculate Order just to demonstrate. It starts with a rather descent melodic riff that goes on for almost 30 seconds with a little variation when the vocals jump in. But then, there is a little bridge to the next section, which is basically just a demonstration of random sweeping that ends with a silly generic breakdown mixed in with lifeless deathcore growls. There is no kind of logic as to what is where and when. Every once in a while they remind you that you are still listening to the same song by playing one of the riffs again.

This modern technical death metal/deathcore trend also comes with a way to produce the music. It tries very hard to be brutal, heavy, sound thick and badass like Meshuggah and all the djent kids. But like anything that is done mechanically, without emotional involvement or creativity, it sounds plastic and fake.

These musicians do have enough talent to put together some interesting riffs, I will give them that. And strangely, some of their best moments are when they go for more melodic like in the instrumental track Utopia at the end of the album, or even during brief moments throughout the album. Utopia is the only track that seems to have logical starting and ending points, with a progression. Maybe having their vocalist shut the fuck up for a few minutes helped them focus on writing music, I don’t know. Utopia still comes in too late to save Dingir from being just another forgettable piece of the growingly more boring history of technical deathcore. Having a few good riffs scattered here and there also isn’t my idea of a good album.

Saturn must be offended, really. Not only is the music uninteresting and lifeless, but I still fail to see what’s the link between this boring mechanical mess they call technical deathcore and space. This is definitely not how I imagine my trip through space. Kubrick took me to Jupiter and beyond. I do hope that Dingir is not what awaits us on Saturn.