RINGS OF SATURN — Embryonic Anomaly (review)

RINGS OF SATURN — Embryonic Anomaly album cover

Album · 2010 · Deathcore

4/5 · 2020-03-07
siLLy puPPy

Deathcore is an interesting subgenre of extreme metal that mixes death metal guitar riffs and blastbeats with metalcore breakdowns and was inspired by the ferocity of early brutal death metal bands like Suffocation and Dying Fetus but took things up a few notches. While bands like Antagony and Despised Ion got the ball rolling in the early 2000s, it was only a matter of time before these types of acts started to hybridize with other genres including progressive rock and lo and behold, it didn’t take long at all for bands like Veil of Maya and Born of Osiris to crank out some bonafide progressive deathcore however they weren’t the only game in town and there have been quite a few bands to emerge in their wake.

One such band is RINGS OF SATURN that formed in the San Francisco / Oakland / San Jose suburb of Dublin, CA in 2009 as a studio only project by Lucas Mann (guitar, bass, keyboards), Brent Silletto (drums) and Peter Pawlak on vocals who were only ages 16 to 18 and still in high school at this point. While the band would expand its lineup, it was this core trio who wrote and recorded this debut album EMBRYONIC ANOMALY which emerged the following year. This debut, the only album to feature Pawlak on vocals before his departure pretty much set the stage for the band’s growing popularity in this field of extreme metal. With lyrics based on extraterrestrial life and outer space, RINGS OF SATURN crafted a unique hybridization of deathcore and progressive metal along with the more astute virtuosic wizardry associated with technical death metal.

While many such deathcore albums can be a noisy affair which is what true metalheads like them for, more often than not many bands can also fall into the sea of mediocrity with no redeeming features to help them stand out from the excessive crowded club. No such case with RINGS OF SATURN on EMBRYONIC ANOMALY as this band found a few ways of standing out from the getgo. While the band cranks out all the expected death metal rampaging guitar riffs with incessant blastbeats bantering away along with beastly guttural growls, these guys also make ample use of silence with staccato palm muted riffing as well as technical soloing and angular time signature assaults that add a touch of brutal prog to the already caustic metal ambush. There are also moments of jazzy interludes that bring tech jazz-metal wizards like Atheist to mind at key moments but mostly these guys manage to weave a noisy tapestry of dissonant deathcore angst with enough varying elements to make this is pleasant experience for my ears.

At times this band has some seriously mathcore-ish chops and remind me of Psyopus with guitar wizardry whizzing up and down the fretboard while other times guitar stomps punctuated by silence offer brief moments of reflection on the incessant stampede of freneticism that sounds impressive considering this is a mere trio of high school kids! Many of the neoclassical guitar solos mixed with the death metal aspects reminds me a bit of Necrophagist but the metalcore breakdowns keep this from sputtering out in that direction. I’m impressed by Pawlak’s vocals as well as he manages to venture beyond the one-dimensionality of guttural growls and provides some serious screams that have some octave range. There are a few atmospheric moments that make use of the keys but mostly this is a metal moshpit inducing eruption of energetic overflow. Deathcore is one of those styles of metal that you either love or hate and by adding progressive elements may make some hate it even more but i’m quite impressed with this debut by RINGS OF SATURN as it has a dizzying display of youthful angst with the unexpected depth of more seasoned professionals.