Improving on a career high watermark is easier said than done, but sometimes making your aspirations a little more intimate can result in results that may surprise you. Effectively creating a genre all on their own, Washington D.C’s finest have crafted a masterpiece that is the margarine to other imitators’ buttery goodness: I’ve always said I couldn’t believe Periphery are not djent, and apparently guitarist Misha Mansoor agrees, given the group’s latest release: Periphery V: Djent is Not a Genre, out March 10th via 3DOT Recordings.
Following up IV: Hail Stan, the band’s most expansive, expressive, and impressive release was not an easy task, but after a four-year wait, PV somehow is more playful, much more bombastic, and certainly meta. It’s a stuffed release that somehow eclipses the band’s renown heights. A modern classic that I can’t stop spinning, whether it’s the synthwave jam, a sexy sax solo, their best riffs, or a host of video game allusions, everything delivers in spades. So Mr. Mansoor, what’s with the long wait for PV?
“We’ve been working on this album a very long time,” he answers, “and it’s kind of exciting to have people other than us actually reacting to it. The reason it took so long is we don’t put out albums until we’re not just happy with it but really proud of it. If we don’t feel like it’s our best album or the best thing we’ve put together, we just keep at it. And so we rewrote this album like two and a half times to get there. This album was a labor of love. I think we’ve been around long enough to where we’ve covered a lot of ground. It’s not so much about what the fans want, but it’s just a genuine pursuit on our end. Like I always tell people, everyone’s finally figuring out and realizing, even though I’ve been saying this for years, this industry doesn’t make enough money for you to do anything other than exactly what you want.”
“So not to be cold,” he continues, “but we don’t really worry about whether the fans like it or not because that’s not going to help me sleep at night. I need to believe in it, and so does everyone else in the band. And even if one guy doesn’t feel that way, we’ve got to fix this. I think the combination of us being tougher on ourselves than ever and also having a body of work that forces us to be a bit more difficult on ourselves. So [hopefully] you’re hearing the results of that.”
“We have become a lot more collaborative, and I think our band has been better for it. Periphery IV: Hail Stain was a high watermark to me. I remember putting it out and thinking we might never top this. I went into this record, and I had a conversation with the band. I was like, ‘Guys, we might have to accept that it just needs to be a good album that I’m not proud of and that you guys are proud of. But I don’t visualize a world in where I will love this album more than Hail Stan.’ I don’t know why that album affected me. And not everyone in the band, by the way, shares that sentiment. It’s not everyone’s favorite album in the band.”
“And I know this is so god damn cliche,” he chuckles, “for a band to say their latest is their favorite, but that was almost by design. The reason this took so long was I realized there’s no reason to put this out unless we beat it. In the beginning it felt insurmountable, and then it really came together. And I would say the collaboration really saved it, probably towards the end when traveling and seeing each other became a lot easier. This is probably our most refined release we’ve ever put out. Second place would probably go to Juggernaut. And they were both these laborious processes.”
“I think other than maybe the first record we’ve been very aware of this and tried to refine this process further, where it’s not about the riffs. It’s not about being technical. I can’t tell you how many sections we cut with probably some of the sickest riffs that would’ve been on the album just because it didn’t add anything to the song. It was just a cool riff, and that does not cut it for us. It has to sound cool in the context of the song. And the arrangement is sacred. The flow is the single most important thing to us. The song needs to flow genuinely. And it’s one of these weird abstract sort of exercises where you may not know why, but when it flows and you also know when it doesn’t. And you know what part is blocking it. So it’s just sound abstraction, but the rule’s always been the same. How do you write a Periphery song? We just have to be stoked on it. That’s it. That’s the only rule. As long as we’re like, ‘Fuck yeah! that’s basically it. It’s just gotten harder and harder to get to that, ‘Fuck yeah,’ point over the years. But that’s the basic goal.”
So where in that process did an album full of longer songs become the norm? Mansoor acknowledges that was not intentional in the slightest.
“Here’s the thing: we don’t particularly like writing long songs. I think long songs are kind of stupid. And I know we’ve written an album of pretty long songs, but that wasn’t the goal. So we’re not really good at writing the music we try to write[laughs]. We pretty much fail with every song we write. But the thing that we do is we let the song decide what it wants to be, how long, and where it wants to go. Again, with arrangement being everything, that determines how long the song’s going to be. It’s not going to be us. And if it needs another section, great. If we need to cut half the song, we cut it. So it’s very much like a reactive process.”
For as much as Periphery have gotten labeled with other technical and progressive metal acts (many of whom would not exist without Mansoor), there’s one key ingredient that stirs the sauce: one djigital djose of djent djestruction:
“Video game music is such a huge influence. [Composer] Nobuo Uematsu is such a huge influence. I think people always say, ‘Oh, they worship Meshuggah.’ [Writer’s note: Periphery are more next generation The Dillinger Escape Plan to these ears, which is a great thing.] I think if people really saw how much Nobuo is an equal, or even sometimes more of an influence. It’s not just musically, but in approach and philosophy, and just video game music in general, where you could have themes that evolve. And you get attached to these themes that you might hear in like a role-playing game for 40 to 60 hours. And when it comes back, but with a twist or in a different context, you get chills because it’s evoking a different feeling. And those are some of my favorite moments in music. So obviously that’s going to get worked in. And a lot of those philosophies of, if it comes back it should be slightly different. It’s an opportunity. We could copy, paste a section, and sometimes that’s the best thing. But sometimes it’s like we have an opportunity to explore. And I think we’re all big gamers. We all love that. We all have that same attachment to those kinds of moments. So again, we’re just writing nerd music by nerds for nerds, ultimately.”
It’s easy to see that every member of Periphery has leveled up (presumably to the 6th level, including Juggernaut), leading to the most diverse and purely enjoyable record yet from a band who somehow has proven that you don’t have to catch lightning in a bottle; you just have to keep chasing the feeling, and the results will come.
You can pick up Periphery’s new album in their webstore. Make sure to follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter if you want to keep up with updates.
