Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Periphery: Periphery [Instrumental] (4.5/5)

Joshua's Top Ten "Metal" Picks for 2010
#5 of 10



Year: 2010
Genre: Progressive Polymetric Metal
Label: Sumerian
TRT: 71:26

This album has been in the works for more than 5 years. Fighting through multiple line-up changes, most notable a veritable revolving door at the vocalist position, this labor of love was finally released. And it comes off in a bit of a "we're just going to get this fucking thing out there and move on" sort of way, mostly because every song on the album has been online in one form or another for years.

Be that as it may, this album kicks much ass. Thick, mean, and impeccable executed, the music sounds better than ever. Unfortunately, The vocals are another matter, but since they released an instrumental version of the album too, I'm going to give Spencer Sotelo a pass on this one. He came into the recording process with a very short period of time to learn lyrics and vocal parts written by previous singers with different styles, and did the best he could at the time. Since then he's grown substantially as a performer, and I look forward to seeing what he can do in his own right.

Having said that, I would recommend getting the instrumental version (though both are provided here). Listening to the version with vocals first, and then a few weeks later listening to the instrumentals, it was like listening to the album for the first time all over again, because so much of the nuances and subtleties are masked or obscured by the often distracting vocals. They do grow on you after a time, but if you're only going to get one, get the instrumentals.

01 Insomnia
02 The Walk
03 Letter Experiment
04 Jetpacks Was Yes
05 Light
06 All New Materials
07 Buttersnips
08 Icarus Lives
09 Totla Mad
10 Ow My Feelings
11 Zyglrox
12 Racecar

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1 comment:

thought.stream said...

I really needed the vocals for this album to work out the best it could. I can't, for example, enjoy Animals As Leaders enough because they never added vocals. Regardless, an outstanding album - definitely looking forward to more from Periphery.