DYFO
As warm weather fades away, Dance Your Face Off! has been seeking shelter at the indoor shows around New England. The month of October gave Massachusetts a solid variety of music offerings, spread out to venues all across the state. We covered a reggae rock show headlined by Passafire, Chadwick Stokes (of Dispatch and State Radio) who brought a mix of classic and new songs to his show, and a rock/metal event headlined by Clutch.
Periphery came to town this week in the form of the Sonic Unrest Tour, hot off their recent release of Periphery III: Select Difficulty. For those unfamiliar, Periphery is a progressive metal/djent band who have been tearing up the metal scene since their debut in 2010 and have been cranking out albums ever since. Periphery III: Select Difficulty came to us just a month before the Boston show, the follow-up to 2015’s dual album and tour Juggernaut: Alpha & Omega. The new album, dense with the familiar heavy riffage of Periphery’s usual style, expands on the band members strengths without being overly experimental this time around – but the result is nothing but another great album from the group.
Mark Tremonti. It’s hard for me to come up with an original, praiseful comment about this guy. With a track record including millions upon millions of albums sold, a Grammy for Best Rock Song in 2001, and being the lead guitarist of one of the most idolized rock bands in the world, Alter Bridge (not to mention my favorite band), Tremonti steps into the rock ring for round two of his solo project with ‘Cauterize,’ the follow up to 2012’s debut ‘All I Was.’
As many of you know, Tremonti was the driving force behind Creed, a popular band in the 90’s and early 2000’s as lead guitarist and songwriter. I don’t think I need to touch on Creed’s success as they’re a multi-platinum and even diamond artist, but once they’re downfall came after numerous issues with lead singer Scott Stapp, Tremonti and Creed bandmates Scott Phillips and Brian Marshall went on to form the astounding Alter Bridge with singer Myles Kennedy (yeah, that guy who made Marky Mark look bad in the end of the movie Rock Star by coming out of the crowd to sing).
Chris Kessaris, guitarist of Massachusetts death metal band Parasitic Extirpation sat down with us to share some of his musical experiences and to enlighten us with the many projects in which he is involved.
As a young man in his early 30’s, Chris (second from left in band photograph above) has quite the number of achievements under his belt. From his band Parasitic Extirpation, a number of SoundCloud accounts and projects in which he does his own renditions of classic Nintendo Entertainment System and WWE songs, Chris is an extremely busy man. At one point in time a guitar instructor, Chris has a knack for learning and teaching. Graduating several years ago with a degree in music, Chris remains a student of music. He told us that he will never be where he wants to be with his music, and ever since the day he heard guitarist Chris Broderick (Megadeth, Nevermore) many years ago, the talents expressed by Broderick pissed him off (in admiration for his skills) so much that this became the leading cause in his drive to constantly be improving upon his own talents.
Periphery is back! After several years in the making and the EP ‘Clear’ in the interim, Periphery is back in full-force with their dual album Juggernaut: Alpha & Omega. For those unfamiliar, Periphery is a progressive metal/djent band out of Maryland who came hard into the metal seen in 2010 with their self-titled debut; followed two years later by Periphery II: This Time It’s Personal. Misha Mansoor, founder of the band credited with reigniting the djent scene, and absolute goofball (love you Misha), established the band back in 2005, and named it as such because he wanted to encompass a broad range of sounds and influences, with no defined direction. After a series of lineup changes leading up to the current sextet and their eventual debut, they have dominated the metal scene for the last five years.