Periphery - Periphery III: Select Difficulty (2016)
As I've said before, I fell off of the Periphery hype-train in early 2014, despite being a HUGE fan of them beforehand. I mean, I had EVERYTHING. I had all of the instrumental SoundClick demos, the side-project songs, even live performances of songs from YouTube converted to MP3. With that out of the way.. I liked the "Juggernaut" albums but I felt like "eh, maybe that magic they once had is gone" because they had seemingly fully embraced the more pretentious SevenString nature of their music in an attempt to make some epic prog-metal masterpiece, or even just that it wasn't for me anymore, and that's perfectly fine, these guys don't have to make music for me in particular (although they can go FUCK THEMSELVES for not catering all of their music towards me) and that's perfectly okay. However.. A good friend of mine with a rather beautiful beard kept on trying to get me to listen to this album, and the first time, it was like "yeah, I'll get around to it eventually" and then after a few times of roasting him for breaking his vape on the way to a Periphery gig, I decided that, sure, maybe it was time to listen to this album and see what my old boys are up to, and... Fuck.
You always have to have a strong opening track to a Periphery album that includes the name of the band in the album title, just look at "Insomnia" and "Muramasa" from the previous two installments, amazing! But.. Oh my fucking God, "The Price is Wrong" is absolutely unforgivingly brutal from the first fucking second of the song. NO clean vocals whatsoever, just so they can squash any talk of "OOO DAT PORIFERY SUXXX NOT EVEN HEVY :///" with some of the absolute best harsh vocals I've -ever- heard from vocalist Spencer Sotelo, and I'm not just kissing his ass because he said hi to my mom on Formspring once (I had a form springing in my pants when he acknowledged me, if you get what I mean!! HAHA! My penis had gotten erect with blood), he really is a God-tier vocalist that can go from sounding like a demon to sounding like an angel, which is kinda ironic that this exact description has been muttered by many people over the years, given "Icarus Lives!" from back in the day ("I'm neither angel nor a demon spawn!") but hey, life imitates art or something, I don't know, I never paid attention to what old people have to say about life, because they're fucking OLD, dude!! Anyhow, if you thought a blastbeat couldn't ever be used in a gorgeous way.. Just listen to "The Way The New Goes..." because there's a section in there that just gives me fucking CHILLS. Spencer Sotelo sings beautifully over Matt Halpern fucking annihilating his drum kit and it SHOULDN'T FUCKING WORK, but it does, and it's heavy as hell, but not even in a metal kind of way, but in a "BEHOLD THE SIGHTS OF HEAVEN!!" type of "Epicloud" worship. Fucking hell!
This album is full of memorable moments to stack up with Periphery's best, capturing so much of their old sound from their first album to where they stand now as a band. You still get the nerdy "we just beat "Final Fantasy VII" for the SECOND time this month!!" theatrics, the catchiness (good God, some of these songs will stick around in your head for days), and the heaviness, but there's just.. There's a lot to take in here. "Remain Indoors" reminds me of a "Diamond Eyes"-era Deftones track with its spacey-but-heavy nature, implementing some of that "you're floating on a cloud.. and it's about to fuckin' storm" magic that Deftones perfected, which if you know -anything- about me from doxxing the living fuck out of me to have me killed by a Hydrocodone-addicted teenager on Reddit with nothing to lose, I fucking love. Now, if we wanna talk some more band comparisons.. There were moments towards the end that I thought "Hey! This is like Sleeping With Sirens if SLEEPING WITH SIRENS DIDN'T SUXX DIXX!! HAHA, TAKE -THAT- RONNIE RADKE or whoever fronts that band, I guess" but something that works a lot to this album's credit is that the album starts out heavy as a motherfucker but gradually gets softer towards the end, following the brutality of some of the tracks that preceded it are.. Beautiful love ballads.
One of the things that I had faulted the band before in the past was that their lyrics had changed a lot from when I was an angsty 17 year old listening to them sing and scream about Greek legends, myths, and all that kind of shit. See, I felt an emotional connection to that music that was hard to describe, it's almost like I related more to the sound of it than what was actually being said, and when the band opted to fit in more personal lyrics starting with their second album, "Periphery II: This Time It's Personal" (which I'll have you now I -JUST- fucking realized how stupid it is that -that's- the gripe I had with an album of that name) I just didn't really get the urge to sit down in the dark with their music much anymore outside of a few tracks.. But I grew up. I was at a horrible point in my life where that shit really meant everything to me, and now that I'm older, in a bit of a better place mentally (don't get me wrong, I've still got my scars) and have more people around me that cushion my fall when I fuck up, I have to realize and acknowledge myself that the band are just guys like me. They grew up and found love, and God.. That's great for them, not only because of happiness, but because we got some extraordinarily gorgeous music out of it.
"Catch Fire" is one of the best tracks that this band has ever recorded for a studio album, aside from its awkward "hey, you guys know "Epic" by Faith No More, right?" pseudo-rap verses, and it's also a track that I could've never expected for them to do when I was foaming at the mouth with love for this band. When Spencer Sotelo sings "Yeah it sure is something when we all catch fire. Bodies burning like the sunrise. Stay with me, I'll show you paradise. It feels so right. Give me that peace of mind and I'll give you everything, just know it feels so good that I could die and join the stars" it sounds almost cringeworthy on paper, trust me, I know this, but the way it's delivered vocally, I had to think about it for a second and realized.. Wow, this track is exactly how I felt when I entered my current relationship and discovered what an actual healthy, loving relationship is where the only limit is those same stars Spencer Sotelo feels he could die happy joining. It's cheesy but true.
I'm not going to act like I don't have any criticisms, I still think a problem exists that has plagued the last few Periphery releases: There just aren't -that- many riffs that stand out anymore, and sometimes they can even get a bit too buried in the mix, which sucks, but really, the only other criticism I have is that Avril Lavigne's character in 2006's "Over the Hedge", a (pop-punk) possum looks -too- much like her in real life that it's fucking horrifying to revisit this "eh, it's aight" animated film, but I guess that isn't a criticism of this album.. Somehow. Still, "Lune" is such a great ending to the album that it almost makes me forget the small criticisms I had of moments on the album that preceded it. A pretty slow-jam? Are these the same guys that made "The Walk"?.. Or the first half of this album? God, this is some good, epic music to play during the credits of some awesome movie where everything was fucked but worked out for the best in the end. If this was the band's last album before disbanding.. I wouldn't even be mad. Okay, maybe a little, but only because that would mean they'd never put out an album this good again. So.. 2017 ain't over yet, if you guys wanna drop a new album anytime soon..
8/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
