CRAFTY DEVIILS

“YOU KNOW, IF YOU’D asked me early on in the process what I thought our new album was going to sound like, I would’ve told you ‘artsy and experimental,’ ” says Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor about the recently released Periphery IV: Hail Stan. “But I guess we were in a heavy mood.”

You could say that again. Because while Periphery — Mansoor and his two co-guitarists, Mark Holcomb and Jake Bowen, as well as singer Spencer Sotelo and drummer Matt Halpern — are no strangers to creating heavy, incredibly technical and wildly whipsawing seven- and eight-string instrumental mayhem — it’s been something of their calling card since they busted onto the prog-metal scene roughly 10 years ago — Hail Stan is quite possibly the band’s most intense and aggressive ride yet. Take the first three tracks alone — the mammoth 16-minute-plus opener, “Reptile,” the crushing and dissonant first single, “Blood Eagle,” and the heavy-as-its-title-would-suggest “Chvrch Burner” — are packed with enough musical twists and turns, and all-out guitar pandemonium to satisfy even the most demanding shred-metal heads.

That said, those who delve further into Hail Stan will, in time, also be met with the sort of “artsy and experimental” music that Mansoor initially believed would characterize the entire album — the bright-toned, if not downright poppy, “It’s Only Smiles,” for one, and also the atmospheric and celestial closer, “Satellites” and, most prominently, the electro-throbbing, heavily orchestrated “Crush.”