Periphery - Icarus EP (2011)
You know how that fucking douchebag you went to high school with ended up becoming a hobo after high school, and you got that job making 80K a year? Feels good, doesn't it? Well, if that happened to you, you're the 00.01% since typically those douchebags are crazy charismatic and people generally prefer hiring charismatic people over outcasts like I. Anyway, people were talking HELLA shit about Spencer Sotelo after the debut album by Periphery came out, saying "this nibba deadass sound like he eat ass B" and whenever I'd say "no he doesn't" I'd end up having to fight off an entire gang of motorcyclists who wanted to shove a bar stool up my ass, which isn't really the best shit to have violently shoved up your ass against your will while you're crying in a public restroom. Well, those haters can SHUT THE GODDAMN FUCK UP because Spencer Sotelo's vocals have improved so fucking drastically from that album to this EP that it's unreal. His clean vocals are no longer strained, his screams and growls are some of the best in the scene, and he's ready to make a REAL name for himself that isn't just being known as the replacement for Chris Barretto. Consider yourself warned.
On this EP, you'll find a KILLER intro track ("New Groove") that was made to absolutely fucking annihilate you in the first minute before a song with vocals can come in, an original new track ("Frak the Gods"), some remixes (they're alright, nothing great, although the Zedd one has some pretty good moments), and most excitingly, re-recorded versions of four songs, most notable being "Jetpacks Was Yes! v2.0" and "Icarus Lives!" which were most people's favorite tracks from their debut album, and let me tell you.. "Icarus Lives!" bangs even harder than before, but "Jetpacks Was Yes! v2.0" is legitimately one of my favorite fucking songs of all time. It's so fucking BEAUTIFUL. Everything about it is so much better than the original, and the vocals soar so heavenly that you'll swear that you're legitimately in the afterlife that we all dream of. I could go on about this specific song forever, it's just unbelievably gorgeous, y'know? This is a release that I could legitimately see haters of the debut album liking because it's so surprisingly much better vocally, and even past that, they're just such an excellent band instrumentally, mixing heavy as fuck guitar grooves (is it just me or is the guitar work in "Eureka" the most worship they've ever given to Meshuggah?) with ambience and electronics, while impressively managing to remain progressive as fuck and easily accessible at the same time, and I have absolutely no fucking idea how any human-being can go from being decent to fucking great at singing in such a short amount of time.. And it's REALLY scary because he only gets better from here on out. Shit! Now I'm sad I stopped singing years ago!! I used to have a recorded vocal cover of "The Walk" that was pretty alright. Maybe I need to get back into this shit.
8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
