Periphery - Juggernaut: Omega (2015)
What a lot of people fail to realize is that it's really fucking hard to market yourself with -anything- in an entire ocean of competition. You can't just go to a night club in Tokyo and scream "WHICH ONE OF YOU FINE BIZZITCHES GONNA FART ON MY COCK TONIGHT??" because their delicious butt-whispers aren't going to kiss the head of just any disgusting meat-piston. I feel like Periphery realized that, and that's why they sold these two albums separately, so the news of Periphery releasing a new album would be further elevated by news of Periphery releasing TWO new albums in one motherfucking day! Pardon me: TWO new albums that could easily fit onto ONE disc, provided they get rid of the pointless reprise at the beginning of this disc, but you know, I get it, it's more interesting to do it this way for whatever reason, maybe even to help get out of their record contract with Sumerian. Hoo boy! There was a time in my life where I genuinely considered Sumerian to be the absolute best record label around. Who was dipping my blunts in Phencyclidine, huh?
I like this album. I do. There's a stretch of three songs on here (the mostly-acoustic "Priestess" which was a surprise, and the heavy as a packed tin can of dicks "Graveless" and "Hell Below", wow!) that make me go "Woo doggy, what a SONG! That's some PURE-RIFFERY right there, I tell you h'what! Where is my FUCKING fidget-spinner, mom?!" but not all of it really sticks with me the way that I wanted it to, or even the way that the first disc did. I know, you may be thinking "What about "Omega"?! What about that part in "Stranger Things" where Spencer Sotelo's voice goes all falsetto and shit?!" and yes, I like it, I do. There's not a second on this album that I dislike, but something became apparent while listening to it: Alright, so one of the things that people praise about this album is the recurring musical themes, right? Like when Spencer Sotelo repeats some lyrics/melody from a song earlier in the tracklisting, and yeah, it actually sounds really nice when it comes in on "Omega", yes, but it left me thinking "Haven't you guys done this before? Like.. Twice before?" as memories of "Periphery II: This Time It's Personal" and "Clear" (okay, the recurring melody, y'know, not necessarily lyrics) came to mind, the idea of reusing lyrics/melodies as a "OH FUCK, I REMEMBER WHEN HE DID THAT THE FIRST TIME!!" thing doesn't hit as hard this time around because I had already been exposed to that multiple times before. It's.. Kinda stale. I never wanted to say that about this band, ever, but shit.
But DO NOT get me wrong, motherfucker! There's some goodass riffs on here, Spencer Sotelo sounds absolutely heavenly when he sings and monstrous when he screams, and there are some bits I really like, like when they randomly go into little jazz-inspired sections, it really helps keep the album from getting monotonous because the album, surface-level, makes you think you're able to guess what's coming next before throwing you a nice little curveball to fuck with you a bit AND give you a moment to breathe, if even for a short time, and that's something I always appreciated about Between the Buried and Me, but that's neither here nor there nor there nor here. This is good. This is a good album. This is a good Periphery album. This is a good Periphery album, and even though I wasn't blown the fuck away by it like everyone else is (referring to the double-album as a whole, mind you), I'm not sure if there's much else I really could've asked from Periphery other than to venture out a bit further into musical experimentation the next time around, given their experiments on here showing off their musical range a bit more than before, with calm, gentle sections and brutally unforgiving sections, as opposed to their previous musical styling of remaining right in the middle of the road of the two. Good stuff.
7/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
