Rings of Saturn: Way Too F*cking Popular

Rings of Saturn, the band that records their albums at half speed, have won the competition to open this year’s Summer Slaughter trek, beating out a dozen or so other, more-qualified bands in an online vote. Soreption (!), Howl, Vektor, Abiotic or Last Chance to Reason would’ve been perfectly acceptable choices, but nope, you fuckers had to go and vote for Rings of Saturn en masse.

I don’t get it with Rings of Saturn: they play perfectly adequate but entirely unremarkable tech-death. The whole “recording at half speed” thing — which is obviously at least somewhat true despite the band’s denial — should turn off anyone with half a brain. But the band’s got a shitload of Facebook fans, which we learned when they flooded our site during the whole recording at half speed fracas, making it easy for them to win competitions of this nature. Not that I’m suggesting the system was gamed or anything… the band clearly does have a real fanbase. That fanbase just happens to very young with a ton of time on their hands and unaware that there are better bands out there in this sub-genre.

Oh well. I guess we can always arrive to Summer Slaughter a tad bit late. Every other band on the bill is absolutely worth seeing: The Dillinger Escape Plan, Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Norma Jean, Cattle Decapitation, The Ocean, Revocation and Aeon.