Samstag, 25. Februar 2017

rings of saturn - embryonic anomaly

i am still on this tech/prog death metal trip and it seems i will ride this wave some more time, because there is no sign of slowing down. unique leader records from the states provided me with some great bands and their releases as of lately. fallujah, invoking the abstract or the zenith passage to name them. so i checked the label's roster and found a few bands that were nothing for me and one that i struggled with. talk is of the guys that called themselves rings of saturn. i checked them out on the tube. their first album first. what i heard was a badly produced deathcore record with some tech elements and solos that reminded me of some musical themes from video games on my nintendo entertainment system console from back in the day. it didn't really caught my interest.
i didn't stop here though. i listened to "lugal ki en", the band's latest and third full length, as well and listened to a band with matured song writing and a way better production. still they had those weird elements in their music but that only added to their unique sound. that spark lit the fire of my curiosity. the hunt was on and i found some rings of saturn vinyl from a german distro. i bought unique leader records from hhv.de in the past and also found two records of my desired band to be in stock, one of them being the debut record "embryonic anomaly". i thought: "why the hell not?", and added it to the cart. in such cases i love to get the whole discography of a band on vinyl and even though it didn't blow me away at first sight, it still could grow on me, right?
the records arrived superbly packed and in no time and when i dropped the needle on "embryonic anomaly" for the first time, i was surprised to find the album had been remastered for this vinyl release and sounds so much better now. what can i say, the guys got me hooked with their fast tech death assaults, the ever present breakdowns and these freaky melodies and nes solos. a little bit over the top at times but a more than solid debut. astonishing that the band member's age ranged from sixteen to eighteen at time the album was recorded. self-released in 2010, re-released by unique leader in 2011 and pressed to vinyl for the first time in 2014. love this bright semi-translucent orange vinyl called "orange comet". unique leader records. 2014.