Metal Wani’s Carl O’Rourke recently sat down with Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor to discuss the band’s new album ‘IV Hail Stan’ (Read Our Review Here), the freedom of making a record on their own label and taking a year to complete it, the relationship within the bands today and more.
On working on their own terms and their own label, Misha said,
“You know, it’s funny, I think a lot of people have associated our, perhaps ‘Do whatever we want’ attitude with starting a record label and putting one of the first releases on there. We always had creative control for what it’s worth.” Misha went on to say, “What I will say has changed is maybe the attitude, because, still be reasonable people we will still listen to what other people in our team have to say. We just don’t have to agree with it, or act on it, right? And I’d say having our own label allows us to not have that pressure. So what I can say now is everyone on our team shares exactly the same vision as us to where we don’t have to have these silly arguments or discussions, you know? Everyone kinda gets it.”
On opening the record with a near seventeen-minute epic, he offered,
“I don’t know why we opened with that. I don’t know why we opened with such a long song. It might have been because we were just itching to write. It was not intentional. We don’t try to write, I promise you, we don’t try to write long songs. Sometimes it just happens, you get caught in the flow. I don’t know, it doesn’t feel like the song is over. [Laughs] So we just kind of keep going with it. Then we were like, ‘it would be kind of funny and kind of epic to open up the album. Everyone will expect it to be at the end’. So I don’t know, it was just kind of funny, I guess, to put it up front.”
Asked if the album could have been made under other circumstances or if it required the time, Misha confirmed,
“I’d say required the time, and this is maybe the lesson learned. We’re still getting better at being a band and playing music. Every experience is a learning experience for us. So maybe the biggest takeaway from this one is; take the time. Because on previous albums when we’ve had sort of stricter deadlines, one thing we didn’t have this time was a strict deadline. It took a year because it took a year.”
Misha concluded,
“When we have that, it sort of forces you to look at a song, and you write it and you like ‘that’s good!’, but you don’t have time to sit with it and see how you really feel about it. And that’s something we were able to do this time.”
Asked if the statement surrounding the relationship between the band is at its best was accurate, Misha confirmed,
“Yeah, as I said earlier I think we’ve just gotten better at being a band and figuring out how to work. I always tell people it’s like any relationship with a friend or significant other. But it’s five guys, so it’s that much more complicated. But if there’s a willingness on your relationship, you know, it’s kind of like one of those things where all parties have to be interested in improving the quality of life, not just one or two. And I think I’m fortunate where everyone in the band is like that and has that attitude. So when we do have problems, we do address them and we work on our communication and it does bring us closer.”
Misha went on to say,
“And I think that we are now benefitting from that because we’re figuring out how to work together. We’re figuring it how to be in a band together, and that always translates to, yeah, probably my favorite experience of making music with the guys. This has come a long way because the first few albums were so stressful, our juggernaut was so stressful, I remember thinking ‘I don’t know how many more of these I have in me. Not anything against the guys. Just the stress itself was just suffocating. Periphery 3 was the first time I was like ‘wow, this was an experience that I will treasure.’, and it’s the same thing for this album. I think we’ve figured, we’ve sort of cracked the code on that for us. Knock on wood it stays that way but it feels like we’ve figured out how to be a band.”