Review Summary: Interesting and varied, this album comes packed with content. And although Periphery buckles their melodic spirit proudly with this release, it is not boring enough to satisfy the pop culture faggots who are just looking for "catchy" tunes.
It is not easy being a hipster snob. I cruise the internet looking for music to get into, but my endeavour falls flat when faced with the likes of Meshuggah, a repetitive fest of instrumental grinding that fails to captivate and stand out--partially due to the fact that they are the ones being copied, but also due to a very simple fact: they are ***ing boring songwriters. How about our brothers at TesseracT? A widely acclaimed progressive metal band that will surely deliver, right? Ha. The potential and fan base are wasted in the midst of their absolute refusal to utilize songspace with, you know, actual content. Lest I spin the disk of Sybreed's Antares for the millionth time, what else could hold me in its loving arms and give me solace in the face of the void left where talent could be, a void so hollow that I could swear that the hole left must be a *something*. In the year of our lord 2012, Periphery II descended from the heavens. And they have come with shrouds to bury us all under the weight of their grace.
The album first lifts itself up onto humble grounds. The opening title, "Murasma", gives the listener a simple tease of its juices. There is not much going on comparatively to the rest of the disc, leaving its dick out in the wind as pedestrians pass by uninterested. And so our aimless wanderer walks the city streets, the lens of eternity encapsulated in the camera eye, buildings stand tall resisting the pitching sky. In an alleyway darkened by years of neglect and abuse, our weary traveler stumbles into the shadow and feels his grip on reality slipping. Deep within the kinetic phases of sleep, "Have A Blast" lurks behind the veil.
Numéro deux greets us with a soft, acoustic introductory phase that quickly transitions into a sequence of simple yet elegant electronics. They are nothing jaw-dropping, but hey, they work. In the moments to follow, the blood rushes through our passengers veins and reveal what is actually a gigantic horsecock, piercing through the silk fabric of boxer-pandemonium. Located within this electronic signature mere mortals call a "song" is a lesson to never trust the schemes of flacidity, the true measure of a man is shafted in stiffs. To get into the human psyche is to traverse an endless unknown, but I for one believe that this erectorous moment was inspired by the harmoniously crafted guitar rhythms. Assuredly, it is on this track where this stretch of vinyl comes to life. After that initial kick to the a face, the attentive listener will take note of the presence of actual musical content. Gee, what a thought! Excepting a few short falls and pit stops, this spinning wanna-be circle thing never fails to keep the interest of even the sophisticated audience. Getting bored of that rift? Have another one! Oh, and in the meantime this feat of cymbal extraordinaire should keep your ears busy for the moments to come. And as if that wasn't enough for your unappreciative ass, we are going to drop this synth right about here. Just for you.
The fascination with melody is highlighted in the chorus of this track, a catchy and irresistible property of harmony-culture. "It seems that the thrill of life enable us to flow. Caught in the spirit's line, souls entwine to journey on as one." I received an e-mail from Fags 4 Melody informing me that although this moment is an epic of moisture and vaginal rub, such moments are too few and far between, i.e. merely a couple times every goddamn song. But I digress, there is no satisfying these anal retentive cunts.
With eyes open to the mother***ing heat ray of that show-off dwarf star, our sidewalk-dominating flesh thing presumably totally forgot all about his wet dream extravagance, because "Faceplam Mute" transitions in as smoothly as a spook who received the wrong address letting himself into the surprise birthday party of a Klan member. The machinations of Hagström's wraith (if confused: this is music from the future -- idiot![1]) briefly come to fruition in this spark of numeric pattern, for the threat of djent chugging briefly emerges. Ultimately, the gay boy band dodges the blow and invokes the spirit of their guardian angel, promptly smiting the bastard to the ground. This must be where the annular pressed plastic finishes growing its roots, because "Jil" sets an apparently controversial trend of being actually interesting. The thick chords are enough to kill baby seals. Observant me has noticed a trend, one where reviewers label such wonders as "filler", presumably they are talking about all that
stuff that is adjacent to empty space. Although "substance" and "variety" seem to be foreign concept to hollow zombies such as yourselves, someone has to speak out against the hysterical mass and their blatant disregard for talent, even if to only be consumed into the carnal orgy lead by the maniacal Slayer fandom.
The arrow of time continues to fly and our discombobulated wanderer has lived, breathed, been raped, and has forged an identity that his inept little ego tries so desperately to assert. Taking an arbitrary leap between the stretches of infinity, we come to "Luck As A Constant". If disregarding the now typical
soft to hurr metal smash! paradigm, pause a moment and take note of its beautiful execution. An aesthetically sensible being should forget about the way this was typed out, it is lackluster by the divine standards that have now been locked into place. This *** was played and it was played well. Despite the track pushing uninteresting lyrical content in the face of artfully crafted poetry sprinkled throughout the rom, this title serves to be one of the strongest and most varied tunes on offer. It is at this fixed point in eternity that Periphery's progressive balls have decided to drop; the structure is far from generic.
Now it seems that was just a cocktease, because "Ragnarok" barges in and smashes all the other tracks into tiny bits of glass and dust. Behold! - the penultimate of this portable glory hole. It is ominously clear that a real attention to detail was present in producing this impossible cohesion of sense-datum. The synths show true programming proficiency in comparison to the more latent electrojumbo that had been pieced together so far.
Spencer's vocals are the subject of much controversy. At times he growls like a rat caught in a wind turbine or sings up like a 30 year old chain reptilian chain smoker. The centerpoint of trouble for the clean vocals lie within the inconsistency between pitch, syllable-to-syllable. He will sing higher notes in moments when such a feat is uncommon or inappropriate. I find that this is nothing but icing on the cake, this album is musically dynamic and pattern-defying, so there is a level of appreciation have with the atypical pitches of the vocal work. More legitimate are the complaints over the deep-pitched growls, they are expelled from the *** hole in an unrefined and lazy demeanor. Sticking out like a sore thumb, Spencer decides to treat us once or twice throughout this entire cycle with a well-defined and powerful high-pitch, this vocal feat is so sparingly present that it almost seems like its place in the mix is entirely accidental.
Misha, it seems, has been taking lessons from Gorija. L'Enfant Sauvage was liquidated with material sufficiently boring enough upon which to build the foundations of an adept buzkillington. After a one hour feast of sonic delight, Periphery declared that something had to be done about all of this variety and change. So for the last two minutes of "Masamune", we are punched with a two minute chug that fades out. Yup. In a temporary moment of sanity, the epilogue was remedied with twenty seconds of obscure and abstract synthetic electrosonic wonder. I will let you off the hook this one time, P.
References -- for the one and only citation, completely necessary.
[1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18dg7G3FTA
