Periphery are one of the up and coming band’s Sumerian Records has to offer lately. Along with Veil of Maya’s latest album [id], Periphery’s debut album has been one of the most anticipated albums in 2010. Currently the release is being hyped heavily online.

Sound wise the band does not disappoint, their blend of Math Metal is great, strongly influenced by bands such as Meshuggah, which is very obvious in their song writing.

But the thing that makes Periphery suffer in terms of strong song structures is their vocals. The band utilizes high pitched vocals for most of the release, and their grunts are just not strong enough to make up for the high pitched singing that follows most of the time.

Front man Spencer Soleto pushes too hard during the guttural parts and sounds like he’s about to pop his vocal chords with the high pitched screaming parts. It's very obvious that he is pushing his vocal abilities up to 11, and it does not work in favor of the very heavy parts he is singing over, if anything it weakens the music.

Musically, you can say the band play’s a progressive metalcore formula while wearing their Meshuggah influences on their sleeves. The amount of Djents is very high on the album, but the band manages to capitalize on it in multiple shapes through out the release.

All in all, the album is certainly a fresh breath in the over saturated "Djent" movement, while the vocals weaken the power the music withholds, an instrumental version of the album is floating around the interwebs. Not that the vocals are unbearable but to each his own, I'm pretty sure there are many fans of crossover genres that will find the vocals to be a great companion to the music.

Periphery's self titled debut album will be out April 20th via Sumerian Records.

Click here to visit Periphery on Myspace

The new Bleeding Through opens with a very atmospheric instrumental, courtesy of keyboardist Marta Peterson. The album has a lot more black metal elements, which I must say from a first listen, sounds very balanced, more then on previous releases.

The band are still doing the blackened metalcore formula, but this album really does stand out in terms of darkness and brutality. The atmospheric keyboards weigh in perfectly with the rest of the instruments.

Brendan Shieppati's vocal performance is top notch and crisp as fuck, his voice backs up the thrash elements on the album precisely. Blast beats and riffle shot riffs bludgeon the album from beginning to demise.

Anti Hero was the first song made available for streaming on the band's Myspace, which made sense since it's a basic Bleeding Through song. (The band is currently streaming the album in it's entirety, minus the intro)

Your Abondonment is one of the blackest songs on the album, filled with blast beats, those haunting riffs and atmospheric keyboards, with some chunk filled thrash riffs to connect the bridges. This is certainly one of the better songs on the album, like the bastard child of Dimmu Borgir.

While Fifteen Minutes, the mother load of all blast beats, should satisfy all the kvlt fans.

Salvation Never Found blasts off machine gun riffing to converge with a very intense verse that just keeps the song on chaotic grounds. The song's main chorus is similar (more like a rehash) to the one found on Sister Charlatan.

Breathing In The Wrath was the 2nd song made available for streaming on the band's Myspace. The song starts off with hardcore gang vocals, that leads up to some atmospheric keyboards and then breaks into thrash metal territory with a vintage NWOBHM riff, definitely one of the highest points on the album, the energy in this song is highly recommend in case of a situation where you have to "tear shit up."

This Time Nothing Is Sacred has unusual time signatures...

The lyrics are the usual Bleeding Through content with the now vintage "I was never good enough for you" phrase thrown in the mix on more then one occasion. The album is also the debut of new guitarist Dave Nassie (Ex-No Use For A Name), who joined the band after Jona Weinhofen's departure.

Once again one of the highest points on the album would have to be the closing track "Distortion, Devotion" which stretches an instrumental for over a minute and 40 seconds and then out of nowhere Brendan growls the shit out of the track, with some intense riffing to help back up the brute force that's fired up, the band executes another memorable chorus (a little cheesy though) to top off be a similar closer like Sister Charlatan.

Bleeding Through's 6th self titled album will be out April 13th via Rise Records.

Click here to stream the entire album.