Vocalist of the Day: Spencer Sotelo

Spencer Sotelo

I never knew Periphery at all until they headlined the annual biggest rock festival in the Philippines, the Pulp Summer Slam XII: The Apostles, alongside of biggest metal acts of today like Blessthefall, Archenemy, Darkest Hours, Agust Burns Red, and We Came As Romans.

I was first hook up with their song "Jetpacks Was Yes" from their debut album, Periphery.  I heard a little from Blessthefall, Archenemy, Darkest Hours and August Burns Red but WCAR and Periphery were total strangers for me.  I researched them and luckily they've got my taste.  This time I fully embraced the loveliness of metal music.  As I continued research them on net, they were labeled with this "djent" term so I became curious about it.  Wikipedia says, " The word "djent" is an onomatopoeia for the distinctive high-gain, distorted palm-muted guitar sound."  Thanks for the cyberworld and Pulp magazine (Periphery on the cover), I understand their kind of music.

In this song, you can hear Spencer's versality of his voice.  He can sing high tunes, then lowered it then growls really hard.  His voice is flawless.  You can't imagine such a sweet voice from a progressive metal band.  He sings like heaven and screams like hell.  For me, he can be aligned with famous metal vocalists like Corey Taylor (Slipknot/Stone Sour), Matt Tuck (Bullet For My Valentine), Chino Moreno (Deftones) etc.

Its not only the vocals that he done in their new album Periphery II: This Time, It's Personal.  I was amaze that he done melodies of their song "Facepalm Mute".  What a talented person!!! Below is a statement coming Misha Mansoor from their facebook account about Facepalm Mute track:

Facepalm Mute: 
This song is very interesting in that it is pretty much Spencer's baby. A few years back he showed a song he had demoed instrumentally with him playing guitar/bass and having programmed the drum ideas, and we all were taken aback, because we knew he was a creative force when it came to vocals but we didn't realize that he was or could even write for the other instruments. I worked with him on the song in the way that I work with the bands that I produce, and helped trim the fat, got the arrangement flowing nicely, reworked some riffs and added some layers, and that demo is what the album version is based off of. Strangely enough he had never shown us the lyrics/vocal ideas for this song, but he had told me that he had some good ideas, and that he was really happy with his ideas for the chorus. I feel like this song is somehow very Periphery, and yet something I never would have been able to write myself, and it is a good example of how tight the writing chemistry is in this band. Since this song was demoed right when we started preproduction work on the album, we decided to play it live on some tours, and it is one of the few songs on this album that we actually jammed in a room before recording the final version and settling on the parts. In the future, time permitting, I think we would want to be able to do that with every song, just to see how it feels to play it as a band. I do, however, think this song has something very special because of that advantage. - Misha

Here's a videos of Periphery: Jetpacks Was Yes! and Scarlet, my top favorite songs.  Enjoy!