A Quiet Drop from Djent’s Loudest Band
This one snuck up on me — and not entirely in a good way. Is it just me, or did A Pale White Dot get very minimal press before it was released? Maybe it’s the algorithm, but this album dropped as a bit of a surprise, and the music kind of matches that energy: solid, but not demanding your attention.
I’ve been a Periphery fan for a hot minute. Alpha and Omega were the records that introduced me to djent — alongside Tesseract and the rest of that early scene. Periphery even went as far as to name an album Djent Is Not a Genre, which is the most Periphery thing they’ve ever done. They’re wrong, it is — and it’s okay to be wrong, because the music has always slapped. A Pale White Dot is their eighth studio album, self-produced and out May 15 on their own 3DOT Recordings.
The bangers are here. “Heaven on High” and “Mr. God” are exactly what you come to Periphery for — layered riffs, that signature syncopated chugging, Spencer Sotelo doing things that shouldn’t work but absolutely do. Worth flagging: Will Ramos of Lorna Shore shows up on “Subhuman,” and it’s one of the more genuinely interesting moments on the record. But the album gets a little lost in itself the longer it goes. The back half starts to blur — “Blackwall,” “Malevolent,” “Carry On” all technically pass without landing. By the time the runtime wraps up, I couldn’t tell you what distinguished those tracks from each other. That’s not something you’d say about Juggernaut: Alpha/Omega or Hail Stan — records that felt front-to-back intentional.
Overall, A Pale White Dot is a respectable release from some kings of the genre. Djent. The genre is djent. But it doesn’t quite live up to their prior releases — and the quiet rollout feels appropriate in retrospect. Periphery fans will find moments to love. It’s just not a record that demands to be heard.
Score: 6/10