PERIPHERY: ‘II: This Time It’s Personal’ Cracks U.S. Top 50
“Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal”, the sophomore album from Maryland-based experimental, progressive metallers PERIPHERY, sold nearly 12,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 44 on The Billboard 200 chart.
“Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal” was released in North America on July 3 via Sumerian Records and will be made available in Europe on July 16 through Century Media Records. The CD features guest appearances by John Petrucci (DREAM THEATER), Guthrie Govan (THE ARISTOCRATS) and Wes Hauch (THE FACELESS).
In a recent interview with Metal Assault, PERIPHERY guitarist Misha Mansoor stated about the band’s musical progression since its debut record, “Our first album was pretty diverse, and with that we created a framework so that we could kind of experiment and push in any one of those directions, and not have it be something weird or something that sounds forced, you know. There’s always been an aspect of that sound and we’re just expanding on it further. And I think very true to that, that’s what we did on this album. We’re still kind of going in all of those directions, but a little bit further, and with a little bit more experience, you know.”
He added, “This album is PERIPHERY the band as opposed to my project with a bunch of dudes. This is really the first time we’ve been able to work together as a band and write an album together. I think that’s really cool because it’s not just me. You’re hearing so much more, you’re hearing something that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”
When asked about the bonus material that will be included with special editions of “Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal”, Misha said, “That’s going for the European release only, and it’s something we’ll release in other territories a little bit later. We did this track, it was Spencer’s [Sotelo, vocals] idea. He really likes SLIPKNOT, and we were so tired in the studio that we wanted to break the pace and do something different. Spencer wanted to do this cover of ‘The Heretic Anthem’ by SLIPKNOT, and I actually played drums on it. I wanted to do it so differently that the engineer played guitar, and it was just a fun little thing. But we decided to put it up as a bonus track and I think it actually came out really cool. I’m really happy with the way it came out. And the other one is this instrumental track that I had to put together at the last minute. It’s a track we’ve been wanting to put out for a while now, and it worked out well. This is a good way to put it out. It’s an instrumental that we used to play live, called ‘Far Out’. So that’s how we compiled the bonus material for some of the territories.”
“Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal” track listing:
01. Muramasa
02. Have A Blast (feat. Guthrie Govan)
03. Facepalm Mute
04. Ji
05. Scarlet
06. Luck As A Constant
07. Ragnarok
08. The Gods Must Be Crazy!
09. Make Total Destroy
10. Erised (feat. John Petrucci)
11. Epoch
12. Froggin’ Bullfish
13. Mile Zero (feat. Wes Hauch)
14. Masamune
Source: rocknollcola
