Periphery

Periphery is the first studio album by the band Misha Mansoor started from the gear in his own room. Sumerian Records released it on 20 April 2010, produced by the band with Matt Murphy, and it is the only Periphery record with guitarist Alex Bois and bassist Tom Murphy on it. Most of the songs had been written long before. Some came from earlier singers Casey Sabol and Chris Barretto, and membership changes pushed the release back again and again. Barretto had nearly finished recording when he and the band parted ways; rather than issue his vocals, they re-cut them with Spencer Sotelo, who only reworked a few of the melodies. Sabol's and Barretto's words and vocal lines are therefore still on the record. The combination of low seven-string chugging, a rhythm that keeps subdividing, and a plain singing melody over the top made a whole area of playing legible at once, at a point when it barely had a name. Gregory Heaney of AllMusic reached for Meshuggah and The Dillinger Escape Plan and praised it for not sounding overproduced; at seventy-three minutes the length divided people, and Rock Sound wrote that the structure could not quite carry it. A special edition with instrumentals and a new song, "Passenger", followed on 6 February 2012.