Is (new) Rings Of Saturn actually legit?

[Floppystrings]

I thought about filming my recording process of my tech death album.

It would be mostly for the kick out of proving the drum parts are real. I wouldn't edit drums, I didn't sit there for hours trying to get my foot speed perfect just to copy and past.

I remember seeing Origin and closing my eyes and hearing what came out of the PA system, the song sounded just like the album. (this was years ago with the original lineup).

Rings of Saturn never really seemed to fit to me, its almost like one member is doing everything and doesn't understand musicians mostly listen to this music and can spot fake stuff real quick.

 

[guitarfan85]

Sorry to sidetrack but can someone tell me what guitar pro is and how is it being used in the case of this band?

 

[GunpointMetal]

Guitar Pro is a tablature/music writing program for guitar. It will export a MIDI file of whatever you program into it with computer-perfect accuracy, that can then be run through a VSTi like Shreddage and several amp sims to achieve an inhumanly accurate performance (with totally fake vibrato). The rumor is that RoS either doesn't bother to record guitar parts by doing the above method, or that they record at a slower tempo and use the computer to speed things up, or that they record each section an individual note at a time and align everything to the computer grid. None of this is confirmed (except by people who use Guitar Pro everyday and can obviously hear the fake vibrato and "down-pick-only" tremolo picked sections).

 

[DarkWolfXV]

^ The Guitar Pro rumor is bullshit (I've said why previously), I also use guitar pro very often, but it's very possible to do such vibrato naturally, with a real guitar (or you could record a note and "vibrato it" with a pitch shifter or something like Melodyne). "Individual note at time and align everything to the computer grid" I'd say is the most accurate, you can make "all downpick" tremolo there, too.

 

[thrsher]

well i finally got around to listening to the new record yesterday, and i think it blows. i enjoy the first 2 records but this album just seems pointless and doesn't really feel like a R.O.S. record. the vibe is just completely off compared to earlier material

 

[goldsteinat0r]

You can't ''fake'' musicianship, if they wrote this song that no one else wrote then he wrote it, plain as day. If classical founders like Mozart were alive today I'm positive they would use as many tools as they could just like they did back then. Now on the other hand, if they cannot perform the song then yes a lack of respect is understandable, if the people are walking around like royalty after the fact, then yes a loss of respect if fine, but old men that wrote songs over 40 years ago can't perform it the same, there's gonna be performance issues, hell Tosin Abasi one of the prog leaders has several videos of him slopping up his lead parts. people have some unreal expectation of watching robots play, then you bitch when they're staring at their frets more concerned with what you think than having fun, is that fair? Now I went a little off track, my point is, even the Haarp Machine had REALLY cool ideas, and I REFUSE to knock the writer down because he had trouble performing that extremely technical music, that I can't play. What about electronic music? Do you listen to that? There's no way ANY EDM artist can play what they wrote because it's all programmed the way you're accusing HAARP or ROS of programming, that's hypocritical standards of modern musicians.

I love you.

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

JOEL OMANS HAS JUST STEPPED DOWN FROM THE BAND.

 

[BrailleDecibel]

 

[isomorphic]

Plot twist: He joins The Faceless

 

[Darknut]

Plot twist: He joins The Faceless

That would be like the opposite of Jeff joining Arch Enemy, lol. Or just like an under-qualified pretty boy Ashton Kutcher joining the cast of the undeservingly popular show 2 and a half men. The death metal scene is turning into a sitcom!

 

[guitarfan85]

Is it a prerequisite for any tech death metal band to never play in 4/4 time? Like it is universally understand that you must never play in 4/4 time not for one second. I'm not bashing these bands, they are all much more skilled than I am. But sometimes i wish they would have a couple bars here And there in a regular time so I can bang my head for longer than 5 seconds.

 

[Emperor Guillotine]

Is it a prerequisite for any tech death metal band to never play in 4/4 time? Like it is universally understand that you must never play in 4/4 time not for one second. I'm not bashing these bands, they are all much more skilled than I am. But sometimes i wish they would have a couple bars here And there in a regular time so I can bang my head for longer than 5 seconds.

>I play in a tech-death band.
>We pretty much only play in 4/4.
>U wot m8?

 

[mikah912]

Is it a prerequisite for any tech death metal band to never play in 4/4 time? Like it is universally understand that you must never play in 4/4 time not for one second. I'm not bashing these bands, they are all much more skilled than I am. But sometimes i wish they would have a couple bars here And there in a regular time so I can bang my head for longer than 5 seconds.

Probably punching waaaaay over my weight here, but isn't a lot of "complex prog-metal" or "tech metal" at least partially in 4/4 or 6/8 (1-2-3 waltz timing) with the drummer keeping that signature with the hi-hats/cymbals/china, but playing a different time signature or syncopation with the kick and the snare?

 

[TheHandOfStone]

Yeah, a lot of tech-death uses 4/4.

 

[GiveUpGuitar]

I always thought some of the melodies were too corny to fake. Like, there are certain riffs on Dingir that are cringe worthy to say the least. It's like mindblowing shred nonsense into some weird metalcore riff. The new album instead takes these melodies and makes them high octave leads. If the vibrato is real (in the example shown above), it sounds extremely lame.

With that said, I stand by the opinion I had about them initially - I have no idea what the hell they're going for, but good god is that vocalist crazy good at his job.

You can't fake those vocals. They are truly, organically, amazing.

 

[GunpointMetal]

A lot of it is 4/4, but the note groups are odd and they don't always repeat in even-numbered measure patterns.

 

[Darknut]

You can't fake those vocals. They are truly, organically, amazing.

Gotta agree with you there. In my time browsing this site I've seen these Rings of Saturn guys pop up every now and then, and I was always very flattered by their low standards of overall musicianship. I normally like to keep thoughts like that to myself, because it reveals a more vindictive side of myself that from time to time can indeed find pleasure from the shortcoming of others.. but in the case of Rings of Saturn.. I really just couldn't help myself! The fact that the "technical standard" of their guitar work has been achieved through an "unnatural" means would ordinarily piss me off, yeah. Especially the fact that the little shit denies up and down that any studio doctoring was used on their old shit, when his previous band mates have come out and said otherwise. But as others in the thread have said before me, the fact that it all sounds like garbage in the end just seems like a funny form of karma to me. And honestly, in a weird and sadistic way, it makes me feel better about myself.

But back to why I responded, when their new album came out and I saw their little band name pop up on the general music discussion board again, I figured I would check it out to see how they were coming along, expecting a healthy amount of unintentional humor. And yeah, I was totally blown away by the vocals. When I said that their shitty music would make me feel good about myself, the vocalist did not make me feel this way. Actually, it was kinda scary how good he sounded. He is truly great at what he does, even though I don't enjoy his style. I thought to myself "Wow, it seems like these RoS kids up and found a real musician." It is almost enough to enjoy their music, which I still don't, , but I gotta give the vocalist guy credit where his credit is due. Especially in the midst of all the guitar bashing going on.

Now if they just decided to write something other than I might start to enjoy seeing their name around here!

 

[Ataraxia2320]

^ The Guitar Pro rumor is bullshit (I've said why previously), I also use guitar pro very often, but it's very possible to do such vibrato naturally, with a real guitar (or you could record a note and "vibrato it" with a pitch shifter or something like Melodyne). "Individual note at time and align everything to the computer grid" I'd say is the most accurate, you can make "all downpick" tremolo there, too.

Why is this such a touchy subject for you?

 

[Housty00]

The low notes in this song sound like laser beams. I don't really understand how someone can't think that's awesome. I don't think it's possible to "naturally" get your guitar tone to sound like laser beams, so regardless of their process let em' be. It's their shtick.

Rings of Saturn.
Laser Beams.
Forever.