Periphery II: This Time It's Personal, Review

For those of you who are not yet aware, Periphery helped to bring the style of metal known as "djent" into the mainstream. Their last full length featured many great songs such as "Icarus Lives" and "Jetpacks Was Yes!." Their latest effort has taken them to new heights. Periphery II peaked at #1 on the iTunes Rock charts and peaked at #8 on the overall iTunes charts. In my personal opinion they have also gone through an evolution as a band. Spencer Sotelo's vocals have very much improved since their debut album. I have often heard his vocals on Periphery II compared to Rody Walker of Protest The Hero.

Track by Track Breakdown:
1. Muramasa - Muramasa is good for what it is. I don't believe Muramasa was meant to be one of the most iconic songs from the album but it introduces the album quite nicely and sets the mood for what is about to come. Muramasa is also the first song in a trilogy consisting of Muramasa, Ragnarok, and Masamune. I think it's fitting that Muramasa is first because not only does it introduce the album but it introduces a trilogy of songs as well.

2. Have A Blast (feat. Guthrie Govan) - I enjoyed this song, this is the first song on the album that really shows how far Spencer has come since the first Periphery album. Guthrie Govan was very good on this song as well.

3. Facepalm Mute - Facepalm Mute starts off like a punch in the face and it has a lot of energy behind and it carries that energy through most of the song. The riffs are bulb-tastic and Spencer does an amazing job on this song as well. The liked how it cooled down at 3:15 and did that for the rest of the song, however, I feel like that was a little abrupt and they should have eased into the softer part.

4. Ji - I liked Ji a lot. For whatever reason I was worried the song was going to over-extend itself and get boring after a while, it was just a hunch. Ji never bored me though as it changed into different sounding parts at exactly the right moments. The intro and the outro were both excellent as well.

5. Scarlet - I thought this song was a little bit on the poppy side, something about the catchy chorus part makes me feel that way. I kind of really like the catchy chorus though, I'm not too proud to say that I really liked the poppy aspect of this one. The song was awesome all the way through. I really loved the guitar work on this one (do I say that about every song?) and the vocals were fantastic as well.

6. Luck As a Constant- Alright, I'm going to try to talk less about the guitar melodies in this one (although they are amazing) and talk more about the structure of the song and the tone of the guitars. I loved the guitar tone in the intro, it's not very common for Periphery to do that and it really worked for them in this song. The song felt like a journey, all of the parts flowed into one another and it really felt like the song took me somewhere, I also loved how the song started with clean guitar and ended with clean guitar, I like it when songs use the structure that Luck As a Constant used and then make it go full circle and end with something that sounds similar to the intro.

7. Ragnarok - This is the second song in the Muramasa/Ragnarok/Masamune trilogy. As a stand alone song I kind of feel like Ragnarok tried to take me on a journey but it had the map upside down and it didn't know what road it was on and it couldn't really focus because it's wife wouldn't shut up and let it drive so it ended up just kind of going around aimlessly trying to find it's way. The song really didn't have a lot of structure, but not in the way prog usually doesn't have a lot of structure, I usually trust that prog metal songs know where they're going, but the next time Ragnarok wants to go somewhere, it should let Luck As a Constant drive.

8. The Gods Must Be Crazy! - This song, it seems a little on the poppy side at times. I don't really have all THAT much to say about this one. It's a really fun song, and it gets pretty heavy in parts, but nothing really jumped out at me.

9. Make Total Destroy - The aggressiveness, I love it. This song was the first single from the album. After hearing this for the first time I could tell that they had really matured as a band and I was excited to hear the album. My only criticism is that it bores me sometimes, I can't really explain why it bores me, but it does at times.

10. Erised - I like how smooth this song is, it's not as "in your face" as a lot of the other songs on the album. I'm really digging the bass, I like when the bassist gets some of the spotlight. I really like the prevalence of the electronic elements in this song as well. John Petrucci is amazing in this song, as he always is. His solo is tear jerkingly beautiful. If you're trying to get a non-metalhead into metal, add this song to your arsenal.

11. Epoch - It's another one that I think is good for what it is, I think it provides for a nice intermission, very electronic, very calming, preps you for the home stretch.

12. Froggin' Bullfish - I really like the intro, it eases me back into the album. The vocals on this one are great as well, clean vocals, harsh vocals, all some of the best on the album. The outro is fantastic as well, I love the acoustic guitar, it reminds me vaguely of Opeth.

13. Mile Zero - I know I talk a lot about intros, but it sets the mood for the whole song, if you have a shitty intro it doesn't make a very good first impression. I loved the intro to this song, it made me happy and made me excited about the rest of the song. The rest of the song didn't really do as much for me though. It wasn't a really "boring" song or anything, but it didn't necessarily excite me throughout the song either, it had it's moments, but it didn't blow me away. The break was really nice though. Wes Hauch was very good on this song as well. Not a bad song, not the best song either though.

14. Masamune - This song is the conclusion to the Muramasa/Ragnarok/Masamune trilogy. I'm going to talk about what I thought of this as a stand alone song because I'm going to provide a review of the trilogy as a whole after the song by song. The song closed out the album very nicely, it carried energy that was similar to the rest of the album and slowly brought it to a much more raw sound that provided for a nice closing riff to the album.

Muramasa/Ragnarok/Masamune Trilogy - As I said in my review of the song, Muramasa introduces this trilogy very nicely, it sounds like it's building up and I really like that aspect of it. Ragnarok sounds much better in this context, I'm viewing this as more of a movie than a group of songs and that's making it sound much better as far as the "journey" Ragnarok was trying to take me on. This feels cinematic and since the next song is Masamune I know that eventually the journey will take me to the end. In the same way it ended the album well, Masamune ended the trilogy very nicely, it brought the "journey" to an end.

Overall Score: I'll give Periphery II an 8/10, it was pretty good, but there were sometimes when it wasn't absolutely perfect.

Recommended Songs: Facepalm Mute, Luck As A Constant, Have A Blast, Erised

-Jake