HARD NOISE: RINGS OF SATURN // Plotting Their Riffs Against Us

Peddlers of some of the most complex and progressive metal going around, Rings of Saturn, are preparing to send riffs into orbit on their impending fourth full-length record, Ultu Ulla.

The project has risen at a meteoric pace since its humble beginning as The Solar Band, fronted by member Lucas Mann. Now, Rings of Saturn is a fully fledged band, featuring on guitar the brilliant Miles Dimitri Baker. Today we caught up with Miles ahead of the release to work out what we should be bracing for.

Hysteria: So, I’ve heard rumours of guitarist that shred so hard that they need to ice their hands after practise, but I’ve never actually seen it before with my own eyes. That’s pretty wild.

Miles: Yeah, my hands are real messed up. It sucks. It’s more like my wrists, both of them. My right wrist is really bad.

You guys put a lot of effort, a lot of thought into your album, so how does it feel to be about to release another one?

It’s really cool, man. This is the first one I’ve been a part of, because I joined the band right after Lugal had come out. So, I’ve never been a part of a record with this band. And on top of that, Aaron and I have been playing in bands together since we were like 15 or 16. We had another band called Interloper that we play in. And so, we’ve put things out, but we’ve never been a part of a full record together. So on top of like the record coming out under Nuclear and being just a solid record under Nuclear Blast with Rings of Saturn, I did it with my best friend. I’m really excited.

Well, what was that process like? I mean, even though you did have mates, or friends, in the band already? I can’t imagine it would have been easy being the new guy.

Well, I mean, I’ve been there for like two and half years now, so the new guy thing went away pretty quick. But, I had a lot of time to … I just did a lot of videos, man. I was just posting videos of my playing the Rings’ stuff, because there’s always been that big controversy with, “Can they play it?” And, I took initiative. Instead of not posting anything or griping about it, I just started posting videos. And someone’s like, “Oh, yeah. He can’t play this.” I’d post a video the next day of me playing it. And, they’d all be like raw videos like something that someone can’t be like, “Oh, yeah. That’s fake. It’s direct audio,” or whatever..

I think I hate filming the playthroughs, but the finished product is good. I do everything for real. I don’t fake any of it. I’m not miming it or anything like that. I literally sit there and fucking do it until I get a good take, so it’s like an all day thing, dude. And, I’m all pissed off at the end of the day, but I finally get the good and it’s like, “Cool.”

I think I hate filming the playthroughs, but the finished product is good. I do everything for real. I don’t fake any of it. I’m not miming it or anything like that. I literally sit there and fucking do it until I get a good take, so it’s like an all day thing, dude.

You guys do drum playthroughs as well. Does he get it done in one take? Is he one of those kind of drummers?

Dude, yeah. Aaron recorded the entire album in one day. Well, he had one song left over the next day. Yeah, it’s crazy, and I think he filmed 10 playthroughs in one day at our friend’s house. That’s where you see the pool table in the background and stuff…I actually wasn’t even there when he did the playthroughs. Andrew from our other band Interloper was there, and I think a couple of his friends. It was just kind of like a hangout while Aaron was filming.

So, of course, by this stage Rings of Saturn has created this really intricate, I guess, tapestry of sound. It’d be interesting to know what quadrant of your universe did you explore with this album?

Now, that’s more of like an Ian question, but to answer that as best I can, it’s involving aliens, of course. And, I think they’re taking over time or something. I don’t really follow or pay attention to any of that. I’m way more about the music, so I have a really shitty answer for that.

You’ve got to listen to one of your songs 20 times really before you’ve heard everything that goes on in it. It’d be interesting to know, do you kind of have that experience with the music as well? Have you listened back to the album which you have just created and heard things which you weren’t aware that you put in them at the time?

No, I know what’s all there. I think I notice things that were supposed to be there and aren’t. Yeah, it’s totally backwards from what you would think. It’s like the exact opposite of a listener’s approach, like from a fan. You know, I hear things that I’m like, “Hm …” And, I remember writing stuff and hearing it get done and it’s like, “Okay, cool.” And then, hearing it on the records like, “Oh, shit.” Or, I hear, “Maybe I could have done this,” or that kind of thing.

Well, how are the songs coming off live? From what I have heard, tour rehearsals are apparently the worst part of being in a band. But, it’d be interesting to know how are they coming together live? Are they translating well?

Yeah, yeah. I think so. We’re playing four new songs on this tour. Inadequate and Parallel Shift we were playing last tour, and those translate really well. This album is a lot more smooth, man. When it was being written, a big thing of mine was make it smooth. Because, Rings is all crazy jumping all over the place. We made a lot of that in this record, but it’s a lot more smooth. It’s not so like here, here, here, here, here. And so, a lot of it is really smooth and a little easier to play … Not because it’s not hard, or not as fast, or there’s not like sweeping or tapping, or whatever, but just because of the voicing on the guitar … I guess is a good way to say that.

But, yeah, sounds good live. Aaron and I rehearsed together. He has a jam spot like 15 minutes from my house, and he’s like 10 minutes from there. So, we got together and jammed. Lucas hasn’t jammed with us because he lives in Texas, and Ian has jammed with because he lives in Pennsylvania. Yeah, it will be good live. There’s some more in store regarding that, but I’m going to stay off that topic actually.

That seemed to be one of the reasons a lot of people like you guys was because you were erratic and all over the place. Where did that feedback come from to become more fluid? Was that just an internal thing? Was it you guys being like, “All right, I’m sick of being all over the place. I want to have a fluid line to follow”?

Well, I think that’s just naturally … Well, I did a lot of the writing on the album. That’s my writing style. I studied music. I did school. I did everything for years, lessons, school … I learned … theory, everything. I mean, obviously I don’t know everything, but I learned stuff. My writing is very much like that. Having had a trained background in music that’s something that kind of comes from knowing all of this stuff is that’s just how I write. And so, I did a lot of stuff on this record too that was like totally what you would think is like classic Rings off of like Embryonic Anomaly. So, it’s like able to do both is cool, but the smoothness is a lot of how I like to do things. I don’t think it was so much a decision made in the band. I think it was a decision made when hiring me as a guitar player as well knowing that I would be on the next record. Because, my writing is out with Interloper, and you can hear that. You hear the similarities between the writing styles. It’s all very fluid which is something I like, but also with Rings I had to maintain and Lucas had to maintain the old style of the erratic here there kind of thing.

The project as a whole has kind of started off as a passion project, like solid project, by Lucas. Were you surprised by how diplomatic it ended up being?

Yeah. We were on tour for two and half months straight, no break. And, got home, I was home for like five days. I flew to Vegas, or drove to Vegas one of the two, and I have a place that I can stay there. Real nice place which is just outside of my environment, outside of the normal things that I deal with on a day to day basis just to remove myself and fully focus on this record. I wasn’t expecting to get that much done. I was expecting to get maybe one or two songs done in the two weeks I was going to be out there, but by time I came back home after two weeks over half the record was written.

It was more than I’d ever written in my entire life. It was a freak occurrence literally. I don’t know how that happened. Once I found myself, dude, I was just up by myself writing. No one else was there writing with me. So, it was crazy. And then, I got that, and then Luke started writing like a week later and finished up. We worked together on some arrangements for stuff … Like, structures I guess is the better way to put it.

There was some things that I didn’t have finished I sent over to him, and then he would come up with some stuff over it. And then, there was things he did completely by himself too, so it was really mixed and really separate at the same time. And, I think that’s why we’ve got a huge dynamic within this album, because everything sounds like Rings but it sounds different.

If you’ve heard the record, you know Unhallowed. I wrote that when I was 17, dude. I was in high school. I took theory class, and it was just like an acoustic thing I wrote.

From what you know from previous Rings of Saturn albums, is that always how they operated? A couple in the room together kind of chipping away at things and they back and forth a little bit … was it always like that?

Yeah. I think Joel and Lucas would write together. I know Luke did a lot of writing. I know Joel also did a lot. Who really know? But yeah, it was different. This was way more separate though. I was like completely by myself, and Luke was by himself. We never met up. We never did anything. It was just separate. I got, like I said, over half done just in that first two weeks. And then, we started kind of like going back and forth with stuff at that point. So, that first two weeks was really like, “Here’s what I got.” “Send it.” “Okay, cool,” and there wouldn’t be any feedback really. It’d just be like, “Yeah, that’s cool,” and then I’d progress with it and keep going. Like, the first song I think I wrote for the record was Inadequate. I think Parallel Shift might have been the second one. I don’t remember the order. I know Inadequate was Song Nine was like the running name for it, but whether that was the ninth song written or not … I highly doubt that.

Everything that Rings of Saturn is about is what Australians love. We love anything that’s technical. We love anything that’s progressive. We love anything that’s heavy. We love anything to do with space. So, it’d be interesting to know, when are you going to be bringing the show down for your Australian fans?

Oh, man. I would love to play there, and we’ve had so many things come through that have made it to the band, because … we’ve had offers come through basically. And, I’ve always been so excited to go, because I’d love to go to Australia. It’s really cool when you know like, my mom, for example, back in the day she was a model for Penthouse, and she did the opening launch of Australia’s Penthouse. So she’s telling me, “Oh, [when you’re in] Sydney, go to this.” I’m sure it’s different from like a million years ago when she was there. So it’s like, I really would want to go there. I’ve heard so many stories. The people are cool. I have friends in bands from there, so it’s like I would love to. It looks like California, dude.

Yeah, that’s what I get told. It looks like LA apparently a lot of the architecture and even the weather a little bit.

Yeah, dude. I live close to LA, and I live even closer to the beach. Yeah. I think there’s a lot of demand, and I think there’s demand especially because we haven’t been. So, I would love to go and play in Australia. I mean, I’m sure we’ll be playing there. If we don’t something bad happened with the band. It’s probably … I mean, at this point a major label, you know, we’ve got a big record coming out, we’re going to be touring all over the place. So if nothing goes catastrophically wrong, we will be there.

Rings of Saturn’s brand new and fourth full-length album Ultu Ulla will be released this Friday the 28th of July through Nuclear Blast.

Rings of Saturn will also be featuring on Hysteria Radio after 7pm all this week