By Jason Walker

Periphery are one of these bands which still seem to be on the fringe of popular metal, those who are into the more proggy music have at least heard of them, in the UK at least. It’s been roughly two years since their last tour, which stopped off at the same venue so it’s a bit of a return home for them. As a bit of a foreword, I absolutely love Periphery, they’re easily one of my favourite bands and have been since I saw them for the first time at Sonisphere a number of years back. They’re more or less responsible for most of the music I listen to these days, so of course I wasn’t going to be one to miss this one.

Astronoid at O2 Ritz, Manchester, November 2019

Fairly soon after the doors, Astronoid kicked off their set, i’d made an effort to actually avoid listening to their music prior to the gig as I wanted to hear what they were like with no prior knowledge. Absolutely no messing around from these guys, straight on and started blasting away some absolutely outstanding vocal melodies alongside some math-rocky style busy guitar riffs.

The light show around their set was very complementary to setting the overall tone of the show, not much colour just mainly white lights. Very little in the way of stage theatrics which is to be expected with a relatively short set but they came out, banged their set out and left with a very brief, “Thanks.”

Plini at O2 Ritz, Manchester, November 2019

To follow up was Plini, another favourite of mine and from previous times seeing his shows, an absolutely lovely bloke to boot. Also, he is joined for this set a guitarist who’s been making a name for himself after the unfortunate hiatus of his band Disperse, is Jakub Zyteki. With both of these absolutely monstrously talented guitarists on stage I was expecting only the best.

The first thing that struck me about Plini’s set was how despite being fairly loud, everything was mixed so well I didn’t actually feel the need to put my earplugs in. No harsh mids or anything of the sort and every instrument on stage rang out perfectly, absolutely bloody lovely.

Plini and Jakub carry the set perfectly with some of my favourite’s from Plini’s ‘Handmade Cities’ getting a good show off – if you haven’t heard this album, you owe it to yourself to listen, even Steve Vai think’s it’s amazing!

Periphery at O2 Ritz, Manchester, November 2019And, finally, Periphery take to the stage. I’ve seen them many times before and despite being a man down in this instance, as Mark (Holcomb) unfortunately had to return home, they absolutely brought hell with them.

Immediately ripping into the 16:44 epic ‘Reptile’, the pit immediately kicks off and I am in it, I am dead center for the mayhem. You might think that the crowd would tire out after such a long song but I assure you they absolutely did not. Periphery go straight ahead and get straight into another heavy banger with ‘CHVRCH BVRNER’, more thrashing about, the pit is an absolute blur of faces, flashing lights and face melting riffs. ‘Remain Indoors’ provides a brief respite with a somewhat slower song, well, until the end of it. Moving onto ‘Follow Your Ghost’ which gets the crowd moving at speed again – as you’d expect this is the tour for ‘P4’ so they’re leaning incredibly hard on the newer songs.

At the mid-point of the show, they choose to pull two songs which are standout favourites of mine, serving up ‘Scarlet’ to a crowd that is still thirsty for more mayhem. I think this is probably one of, if not my favourite song by theirs, it’s also got a bonkers music video and I urge you to check it out. After screaming my lungs out, next up is ‘Marigold’, again another belter from their ‘P3’ album. The chorus is a definite sing-along type, with many people spinning their hands in the air to the line “death is coming round like a hurricane swirling”.

Periphery at o2 Ritz, Manchester, November 2019The latter part of the set starts with another sing-along, ‘It’s only smiles’, which seems to be a bit of a divisive one as it’s quite an aching-heart sort of number. I didn’t really warm to it much when I listened to the album, but you can bet I was singing along to this!

‘Psychosphere’ next, admittedly not really one I enjoy that much from their ‘Juggernaut’ double album so I used this moment to catch my breath as I knew for a fact which song was coming up next. This is it, this is the big one where the crowd just went berserk, ‘Blood Eagle’. A callback to a rather gruesome execution practice by the vikings and the riff is pure filth, and like everyone around me just woke up to the fact that this was indeed happening right now, the pit is going absolutely wild.

The final song as the encore is a rather heartfelt one from ‘P3’ – ‘Lune’. It’s only a relatively recent addition as a send-off and it’s quite fitting really, finishing with a chorus from the audience and I am spent.

Periphery came for war, and they most certainly got it.

  • PHOTO CREDIT: Photos by the author.
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