Review Summary: Moving swiftly on from Periphery I...
...Periphery II is out now!!!!!. I could end this review right there, and why shouldn't I ? I don't want to talk about Periphery, you don't want to hear me talk about Periphery and Periphery don't want to hear me remind them that they exist. Well, this album is ultimately pointless and so is this review, so what the ****, I'm not going to talk about Periphery's debut, that **** is redundant, I'm going to talk about their new album, Periphery II.
Basically, this album would have been amazing if it had a decent title. Albums with decent titles are always ****ing amazing, if you don't believe me, compare My Chemical Romance's album that had a long title with Bullets and Love in it to an album like Converge's Jane Doe. Both are absolute ****, but I kinda like Jane Doe because it has a cool name. Periphery II: This Time It's Personal has the worst title I have ever seen, and it ****ing blows.
While listening to parts of the album to get a better idea of what it sounded like, I learnt only one thing; the only way that you can make it sound worse is by listening to certain tracks instead of as a whole. As a whole, it is ****, but at least it is consistently ****. If you jump from track to track, it is like a barrage of **** flying at you, as opposted to a barrage of **** flying in slow-motion. Therefore, either listen to it as a whole, or go away and listen to some Sigur Ros.
There are two songs on this record that stood out for me. The first is
Scarlet, which I remember as a faux-power-ballad written for Ms. Johansson that would be great is it wasn't vapid as ****. The second was
Facepalm Mute. This song has lots of potential meaning. It could suggest that in an effort to acheive something orignal, Periphery have taken the djent picking style a step further and are now using the face instead of the hand for palm muting, for the palm muting that they are acheive is in songs so meh that it results in facepalming. Whatever. All it does for me is make me smash the mute button with my face in a frenzy to get that **** the **** away from me.
Now, while I was streaming this, so that I could actually write a review about an album that I had heard, I was trying so hard to not listen to it that I completely failed to take in any of the lyrics. Because this is such a recent album, none of the lyric websites have anything from it, so I decided to make some lyrics up and pretend that Spencer was trying-very-hard-to-sing them instead of whatever bull**** the band actually wrote about Greek mythology and death and fairies:
Friends are like potatoes
If you eat them, they
DIE
You wish you could
Destroy
Us with your hate
And try your best to
Erase
What we've done, but we'll never ever ever ever
Improve
Well, aside from that, my opinion on this album is pretty worthless, so here's some other peoples' opinions:
"I heard it once...thought 'sweet' and then promptly forgot about it." (Some guy on youtube who covered Facepalm Mute with a sock on his guitar and sounded as though he was trying to light a fire by using his strings/pick as a tinderbox)
"ur album is the best thing ive ever heard" (Random dude on facebook)
"It wasn't just innovation that critics were impressed with, however, it was the sheer technicality and skill that the group had with their instruments." (br3ad_man talking about Atheist - Unquestionable Presence)
"You just come back, and expect everyone on the internet to want you back?" (coppercab (ginger on youtube))
"I don't give a flying ****, mother******" (Alexi Laiho)
