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Haunted ShoresVoid

✦✦✧✧ Did you know that, before he joined Periphery, Mark Holcomb had started a metalcore band named Haunted Shores? And that, rather than formally ending that group, it morphed into a side project between him and Misha Mansoor? Don’t be minimized by this instrumental shredfest’s small footprint; 37 minutes tends to stretch when it’s almost completely filled with 16th and 32nd notes.

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Haunted ShoresViscera

★★★☆ Not only is the best Periphery release of 2015 (which is saying something, considering this is technically only half of the band, working under a different name), but this is the best djentish instrumental EP since Chimp Spanner’s 2012 release All Roads Lead Here. With some editing and more of a story to tell, this could have been a four-star album.

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Metal?

I was listening to the new Haunted Shores EP today, and fact-checking myself on whether it was the side project of two members of Periphery. So I took a side trip to the excellent Encyclopaedia Metallum… and suddenly found myself reading a thread about the age-old question: are they metal?