Reviews

Album Review: PERIPHERY – Periphery II: This Time It's Personal

this time it's personal

Sophomore slump has plagued countless bands, regardless of the genre. It’s always difficult to follow up an album that could have taken any number of years (in Periphery’s case, five). Luckily for the Bethesda-native djentlemen, they’ve always been ahead of their peers in both technicality and songwriting ability. While the releases of “Make Total Destroy” and “Scarlet” had me worried that the group were descending into Protest the Hero-meets-Haunted Shores territory, Periphery II offers up almost seventy minutes of varied progressive metal with a more than healthy dose of, dare I say, pop. All of the elements from their first album are still present, which should both please their established fan base and keep their naysayers foaming at the mouth. That being said, Periphery II is a much more mature album and shows the band willing to both experiment with new ideas as well as refine the old. (more…)