Interview with guitarist Misha Mansoor | By Nicholas Senior
God forbid Washington D.C.’s Periphery make it easy on themselves. After 10 years of pioneering modern progressive metal, writing their two-disc concept album, Juggernaut, was no easy task. The album – which boasts a fitting title for a band that feels like an unstoppable force – dropped Jan. 27 through Sumerian Records.
With 17 songs over the two albums, was it your intention to paint with a wider brush?
Yeah, with it being a concept album, I think it did need to be painted with a wider brush, especially because we wanted the songs to relate to the story, the lyrics. A more theatrical approach was definitely taken on this album; a lot of decisions we made when arranging things were much different this time around. In the past, each song was on its own.
I think the concept gave us a little more leeway to experiment with more styles and sounds. Everything [revolves] around the story. There are Easter eggs where parts will reference other parts, musically or lyrically. It was so fun to play around with that. Having themes come back with a twist was fun, and approaching the album as this entity, rather than a collection of songs, made a big difference. That’s what really attracted us to doing the concept album: those little Easter eggs. We ran wild with that shit. [Laughs].
So, is all that fun the reason this took so long?
I’d say half and half. The process took a while because we did everything ourselves, and we wanted everything to be a certain way. What I think a lot of people don’t realize is that bands are often rushed through this process. We’re fortunate that we have a lot of our members who write, because we had a lot of demos to start off with. A lot of bands just come off the road, and the label will say, “We need a record in a month or two.” A lot of these bands will make a name for themselves on an album that does really well, but they don’t realize that it was the culmination of probably five years of their best work, and in a couple months, you have to outdo that.
Luckily, we’ve never been faced with that problem on the writing side. On the recording side, we’re really specific about what we want and the standards we have. Because of that, it’s very time consuming. In fact, we probably could’ve recorded our album in about half the time if we cut a bunch of corners, corners that probably no one but us would have noticed. But, again, that’s not how we do it. We had the time from our label, so it was nice. We worked really hard, but it was nice not having this unrealistic deadline hanging over our heads.
Speaking of playing around, “22 Faces” is a really catchy track for Periphery.
In terms of arrangement, it’s funny. It’s very simple. However, in terms of riffs? That song has some of the most fucking pain in the ass riffs on the album. That’s one of the hardest songs to play, but the arrangement is very traditional. It’s like a progressive song disguised with a radio arrangement, if you will. It’s actually one of the songs I’m looking forward to playing live least, because, as a guitarist, it’s a nightmare to play [laughs]. What’s funny is you don’t realize [vocalist] Spencer [Sotelo] is equalizing everything, almost masking everything going on underneath. It’s played with an eight string guitar, but it uses all eight strings, and there’s no break. It’s like riffs, riffs, riffs. It was one of those things that when we were writing it, we thought it was so cool, but now that we have to play it, we’re like, “Fuck!” […] That chorus sucks, dude. It’s slightly different each time for the guitars, so you also have to learn the variations.
Why did you do that to yourselves?
I don’t know, because we don’t think about things ahead of time; we just write. Plus, we know we’ll get it down, eventually. I know it’s just a matter of practice. It’s funny, because the two most single oriented songs on the albums also have the most intricate guitar work. I don’t know why it works out that way. I was hoping those would be the ones where we can relax live, but nope.
Would you ever consider writing a radio-friendly pop song?
It’s easy to write a song with a radio arrangement, but it’s really difficult to write a good song with a radio arrangement [laughs]. It actually seems like a really fun challenge. I’d have to talk with the band first, but we’re always trying to shake things up. The Clear EP was a fun experiment, so maybe writing a radio song could be fun as well.
Purchase Juggernaut: Alpha and Juggernaut: Omega here: Physical | iTunes