PERIPHERY: Periphery

Produced by Periphery

Released: April 20

This album hits the shelves preceded by Roadrunner's usual enormous and admirable level of hype and just in time for their jaunt around the country with The Dillinger Escape Plan next week. Periphery has already gained something of a strong following courtesy of guitarist Misha Mansoor's heavy presence on key muso sites and forums and there can be little doubt that this album's clever combination of currently popular metal genres, faint technical bent and sprinkling of experimental touches will draw in many more.

Periphery has managed to lure the more casual fans of bands like Meshuggah, but more seasoned followers will probably see through Periphery's veneer rather quickly. Indeed, it's difficult to see how Periphery has attracted the mathcore tag because while some of the songs are far from linear, they aren't a particularly technical band. By the same logic, having a trio of guitarists simply doesn't seem necessary. There's no real reason for even Iron Maiden to have three guitarists, and while Periphery can probably justify this far better than Whitechapel, all the guitar parts on Dillinger's new album were recorded by just one guy, and that seems far more difficult to play than anything on display here. The band seems to be doing a careful balancing act between experimentation and commercial metalcore, ultimately coming across like Dillinger-lite crossed with All That Remains. Spencer Sotelo's blandly generic vocals don't take anything away from this evaluation of their style: while both his clean and growling modes are more than adequate he just doesn't have an identifiable character. One could replace him with Phil Labonte, Howard Jones or our own Mark McKernan and there would barely be any difference. Having joined the band at the last minute -- former singer Chris Barretto's parts were erased and replaced by Sotelo's -- probably didn't help and it can only be hoped that he can develop a sound of his own in the future.

For all of its generic failings however, Periphery isn't a bad album and while the band wear their influences on their sleeves there is clear potential evident in the way they make the transition from the clean chords in "All New Materials", the swirling guitars of "The Walk" and Mansoor's occasional electronic manipulations like the bass n' drum coda of "Light". "Buttersnips", the Meshuggah-esque grooves of "Icarus Lives" with its amusing outro and the Dillinger-like "Zyglrox" are all stand-outs, with Periphery just sounding more convincing when they're being heavy and a little quirky and not trying so hard to be everything to everyone. On the expansive closer "Racecar" the band really starts to explore their more experimental side, with added guest vocalists (including an even earlier former singer) that don't sound that different to each other and a guitar solo from Jeff Loomis at about the 10:25 mark, and it's obvious that this is where Periphery really wants to be.

Periphery is a competent debut and introduction to a rather decent band, but it's not anything that really breaks any new ground although it's more than apparent that Periphery could if they weren't holding themselves back and standing in the shadow of their idols.

1. Insomnia
2. The Walk
3. Letter Experiment
4. Jetpacks Was Yes!
5. Light
6. All New Materials
7. Buttersnips
8. Icarus Lives!
9. Totla Mad
10. Ow My Feelings
11. Zyglrox
12. Racecar

Rating: 72%