First Listen: Periphery – Periphery
Periphery are one of the up and coming band’s Sumerian Records has to offer lately. Along with Veil of Maya’s latest album [id], Periphery’s debut album has been one of the most anticipated albums in 2010. Currently the release is being hyped heavily online.Sound wise the band does not disappoint, their blend of Math Metal is great, strongly influenced by bands such as Meshuggah, which is very obvious in their song writing.
But the thing that makes Periphery suffer in terms of strong song structures is their vocals. The band utilizes high pitched vocals for most of the release, and their grunts are just not strong enough to make up for the high pitched singing that follows most of the time.
Front man Spencer Soleto pushes too hard during the guttural parts and sounds like he’s about to pop his vocal chords with the high pitched screaming parts. It's very obvious that he is pushing his vocal abilities up to 11, and it does not work in favor of the very heavy parts he is singing over, if anything it weakens the music.
Musically, you can say the band play’s a progressive metalcore formula while wearing their Meshuggah influences on their sleeves. The amount of Djents is very high on the album, but the band manages to capitalize on it in multiple shapes through out the release.
All in all, the album is certainly a fresh breath in the over saturated "Djent" movement, while the vocals weaken the power the music withholds, an instrumental version of the album is floating around the interwebs. Not that the vocals are unbearable but to each his own, I'm pretty sure there are many fans of crossover genres that will find the vocals to be a great companion to the music.
Periphery's self titled debut album will be out April 20th via Sumerian Records.
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