Rings of Saturn

One of my favorite deathcore bands of all time has become a shell of their former self. I honestly wasn't sure I even wanted to listen to this album considering Ian is gone. He was a big part of this band and extremely talented, and the fact that the band didn't even bother to replace him shows. Or, maybe Lucas Mann just decided to be himself like usual. Lucas is probably the reason Ian left, or was possibly fired because Lucas wanted full creative control over the band. We may never know, but now we've entered the instrumental era of the band. Rings has obviously done instrumental tracks in the past, and they were really well done. Utopia is a bitchin' track and probably my favorite of all the instrumentals, The Heavens Have Fallen is a much more melodic and mellow track with quite a bit of acoustic parts thrown in, The Macrocosm is another really awesome one, and Gidim is definitely my second favorite because it's the most alien to me I guess. Thinking back to those tracks, I decided to finally cave in and listen to this latest record, and man am I torn.

From the second this album starts, I already knew something was up. Oriental style trap beats? Did Lucas recently get done listening to Yokai by Within Destruction? As much as I love Yokai, I don't think the trap beats work here. Rings has never used trap beats before, nor have they really done any piano stuff. Speaking of the piano parts, I actually really dig them. A nice contrast instead of just opting for acoustic parts. There's one good thing. The trap beats add nothing though. I don't know who thought they were a good idea. They're so low effort as well. I swear I've heard most of these trap beats about a million times before. It's kind of cool when they work in tandem with the machinegun-like riffing and drumming, but on they're own, they stick out like a sore thumb.

Now, about the instrumental parts themselves. The guitar, bass, and drums sounds amazing, truly. The production on this record is top notch, so each of the instruments really shine through. Again, would be better without trap beats, but I digress. The riffs are really solid here I must say. Very much taken out of the playbook of Gidim more so than the other previous albums. I will say, though, that the drums do sound a bit overproduced and fake, which is probably the case because the band doesn't have a drummer and probably just used a drum machine. I don't have any major problems with that, but if you're putting all your attention on the instrumentations, you might as well make it as believable as possible. The bass is definitely present, which I always appreciate, although most of the time it's coming from the trap beats and not an actual bass guitar. Overall, the instrumentation still sounds very much like Rings, so I give it an A for this category.

Funnily enough, I actually think one of the best tracks on this album is Sector 80. The track is a whopping 14 seconds. In all seriousness though, I wish this track was a lot longer. Within those 14 seconds, I felt like I was about to listen to the Rings I grew up with, but alas, like any good relationship, it didn't last long. Actual standout tracks would include Shrine, Ascending, and Shinigami. Extremely solid guitar work and pretty good drumming. I'm going to actually recommend you listen to all the tracks because they're all pretty interesting, but only if you're willing to get past the trap parts, which there are quite a bit of of.

After giving this album a solid listen through, I'd say this latest effort from Rings of Saturn deserves a 72%. It may seem generous, but that's what I'm feeling. Most of the album is really technical and badass sounding. The biggest downside is that you're expecting the songs to pick up at a certain point go all out, but then it just dulls down to a trap beat section. If you want to have a really REALLY good time with this record, I recommend listening to it stoned off your ass.