Album artwork for Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal
The last several albums that I have talked about on this blog have admittedly been fairly calm in terms of instrumentation and style (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), so it’s time to kick it up a notch with the heaviest album so far: Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal. Before even listening to the album, we can tell that the band Periphery at least seems to either have a good sense of humor or an excessively nerdy obsession with terrible cinema (or perhaps both), so we can be assured that the music must not be too bad. As the follow-up to their highly regarded debut album, Periphery, this second effort showcases the band’s successful effort to adhere to their definitive style while continuing to expand musically. In the two years that have elapsed since their first release, it is clear that the band has matured as a cohesive unit both musically and compositionally.
Periphery has been instrumental in carving out a recently developed niche in the heavy metal community widely known as “djent.” The origins of such a word come from onomatopoeic relation to a particularly refined tone of guitar distortion that is achieved by palm muting heavy chords while boosting the gain to emphasize tightness and clarity. Such a sound becomes apparent in any of the fourteen tracks on Periphery II, as it is a defining characteristic of their style. Although there has been an unending flow of controversy as to whether or not “djent” metal is an appropriate name, I am choosing to consider it as a recognized subgenre because it is currently the only name that has been associated with the style, and it would be a disservice to simply lump it in under the label of progressive metal. If you happen to be one of those who believes that “djent” only applies to the guitar tone and not the style of music, then consider this: industrial music is named after Industrial Records, the record label that spawned it, psychedelic rock is named after the psychedelic drugs that were widely used by its most avid supporters, and the term “ska” comes from the distinctive sound of the guitar strumming that defines the genre. If these are all considered legitimate names, then surely “djent metal” must also be valid.
Audio Intimacy 