Djent, twang, aim, fire … time for a bit of Periphery. There’s the fast and hardcore bit. I’m juddering to “The Price is Wrong”, the opener on the new album “Periphery III: Select Difficulty”. The battering man batters, the technical man is technical and it’s all pretty damned angry. Nice one.
Now I always like a bit of New York hardcore and I hear a faint touch of that from the Washington DC quintet in amongst all this djent energy. But what I particularly like is that while I’m being shaken from corner to corner, there’s a kind of mini earthquake and I find myself on some parallel progressive planet. “Marigold” has a kind of Swedish metal melody about it, and takes us on another colourful and rhythm-rich excursion. “Polyrhythmic patterns and soaring melodies” is what I believe I should call it. Periphery go Soilwork … well a little bit and a lot when they start on the harmonies. A dark symphony ensues – now that’s clever when you’re not expecting it and you finish up thinking “that’s what this track needed”. Djent, hardcore, tech metal and now symphonic Swedish melody – what next? The cosmic section, of course. Christ, this is taking me to some places. Now top that.
Well, I wouldn’t say that “The Way That News Goes” tops “Marigold” but it is another deluxe feast of emo-driven, harmonic, progressive and technical songsmanship. Adjectives abound to describe this creative and colourful epitome of modern metal. Not to forget the melancholic piano piece at the end, of course. A chunking melody returns and as ever it’s turned into a powerful song, racked with Killswitch-style emotion but also instrumental passages of epically controlled and varied proportions. “Remain Indoors” may be a little sloppy for some but for me it was the perfect kaleidoscope of sounds with its djenty, epic, cosmic and emotive elements all fusing into one song. This said, I welcomed the return of the screaming, shuddering “Habitual Line Stepper”. The patterned rhythm, which was punctuated by an interesting harmony line, breaks out into gargantuan prog of the heavy and haunting kind. Thunder, symphony, echoes, symphonic sadness and technical variety send us once more into metal wonderland once more. Never has so much been fused in such an overwhelmingly coherent and powerful way. “Flatline” is more mundane by comparison with the others but the combination of musical patterns and modern melody is there. I was on my guard because there’s always a twist and sure enough a break leads us into a darker and emotion-capped end. Convention is not where “Absolomb” is at. A punching rhythm with a light touch of jazz greets us. The song blossoms through the drum’s sophisticated patterns and the guitar’s colourful progressive meanderings. As the emotion reaches its height, the track takes a symphonic turn then blasts us out of the sky with a pulsating and majestic ending. We pas through the one nonentity track, ironically called “Catch Fire”, then modern screamy twangdom returns with “Prayer Position” – the technical work lifts it above the parapet. There’s a bit of Mercenary about all this, with the aggression mixing with the harmonies, but here’s there an uber tech section to finish. It all finishes with “Lune” from the smoother end of Periphery’s portfolio.
It was always going to be hard to achieve the mind-blowing heights that Periphery achieved over the first half of this album, and whilst the emotive strains and technical progressive patterns are always there, the richness and intensity in the later stages aren’t. Much of “Periphery III: Select Difficulty” is vibrant, fresh, engaging and outrageously sophisticated, and all of it is highly accomplished.
(8.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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