INTERVIEW: Spencer Sotelo & Jake Bowen – Periphery
Since their inception in 2005, PERIPHERY have grown into one of the leading names in progressive metal. Thanks to a wicked sound and a solid determination with their craft, with each release, the band only grows in stature. Now, three years after the release of the stunning Periphery III: Select Difficult, Periphery IV: Hail Stan is here. We sat down with vocalist Spencer Sotelo and guitarist Jake Bowen to get the lowdown on their next musical venture.
How different really is Periphery: IV in comparison to Periphery: III? Musically, lyrically – just overall.
Spencer: Every record has its own identity – it hasn’t been intentional, I think it’s just where we’re at as a band, you can really hear that on Periphery: IV as time goes on, there’s a completely different melodic identity; you’ve got heaviness and obviously this is our heaviest record yet. Melodically it feels pretty different, way darker, lots of minor keys.
Smiles is mostly major, no??
Spencer: Right, but it’s also the darkest, heaviest lyrically
Touching on the Viking theme that you’ve got that going throughout the record – where did that originate from as a concept?
Spencer: I just found to be a cool concept to write about – I was inspired by the history of Vikings raiding throughout England yknow, history’s pretty brutal sometimes and I was watching the show on TV a lot whilst we were writing, it really hit me as a pretty cool place to touch on and draw upon.
Is Reptile a reference to that whole theology as well? The figure of eight image of life//rebirth etc?
Spencer: Actually no! Only CHVRCH BVRNER and Blood Eagle are the tracks on the album that have anything to do with the Viking/Christian theme – Reptile is really it’s whole other thing/ weird concept.
Right, who put it forward to start with a 16 minute intro track (a banger at that)!?
Jake: Really I think it was Misha and then we were all like “yeah! let’s do it, we can do whatever we want!”
Of course – as this album was more independent as it were, no label to worry about or be adherent to?
Jake: Not that there ever really was I mean, we listen to suggestion and we’re very open to hearing out our team; things like that may or may not have had resistance in the past but it’s now, yeah, we’ll put that first, nothing anyone can do about it.
Speaking of all of that – does it feel different breaking away; now doing things with 3DOT??
Jake: Fewer people, fewer opinions – I love that. Our manager is kind of the voice of reason and “dad” in the group – there’s gotta be one person, he gives it to us straight, we obviously value his opinion a lot but he trusts us to make decisions on the band and he lets us live completely creatively, but he will also definitely generate strong opinions here and there; he’s the only person we really counsel to.
New album – new album cycle, can we expect a UK tour any time soon?
Jake: There is nothing set in stone but I have a feeling you’ll be seeing us over here before the end of the year I’d say – if everything goes according to plan.
Spencer: Yeah I mean we do the album cycle with a tour with every album and we’ll try to cover as many territories as we can – it doesn’t always work out that way, some places get covered a little more, others a little less so it’s just a matter of timing really with what other bands are available.
Is there anywhere that you feel you absolutely have to visit again, from a previous tour perhaps?
Spencer: One place that has been really good has been Germany – it juts gets better and better every time that we go there and the food’s great! Specifically Cologne really.
Jake: Germany for me at least, it feels like it’s been a bit hard for us especially when we first started out but they slowly warmed up to us and now we have a very solid German fanbase and I’m excited to come back.
Periphery IV: Hail Stan – particularly vocally, what’s been different, what’s been the same? Any new challenges on this record?
Spencer: I didn’t go into this one really thinking about how I was going to perform it live, whether it would be possible or not – just do what I’ve done in the past and try to one up myself, I’m not sick of it yet so!
Anything you particularly wanted to avoid? Things you’ve done before?
Spencer: No ‘misery’. And there’s no ‘dreams’ on the record either I don’t think!
Delivery wise it’s all over the place. Highs, lows – tonnes of cleans and screams all mashed together, what influences do you feel you’ve really drawn on?
Spencer: It was really just what the parts needed, the guys wrote really beautiful parts at some times and at others really aggressive bits which I would just feed off of – some of the stuff that came out wasn’t planned at all it’s just what materialised in the end.
In terms of process has this record been more written all together and collaborative rather than being in other places at different times?
Jake: Sometimes it happens separately and then other guys will come and weigh in on certain sections but you know. I will say that the arrangement side of things has been more experimental than it has been in the past; props to Spencer to being open to that since we’ve been pretty rigid with arrangements in the past. We want to write concise songs that have a direction, I feel that on this record it was way more open to being experimental – Reptile for example there’s this adventure from beginning to end, key changes at various points.
Right, how are those specific musical decisions really made?
Jake: It’s all accidental. Without getting into too much music theory talk or things like that – we’re not the kind of group that’ll be “hey let’s move to D minor here” or whatever, we don’t speak in those terms, but we’ll experiment with arrangements and see how they flow really.
I guess that’s one of the main benefits of keeping this record all ‘in-house’ as it were, no? Who was it that took on the majority of mixing/ editing duties?
Jake: I think we all have a hand in it really; I’d say for certain things I’d defer to Misha and others I’d go to Spencer, the latter more because Spencer needs to have his voice sit at a certain point in the mix and y’know – Misha has a very unique ear and can hear things that I don’t, I rely on his ear a lot to make the most of what we’re writing.
Periphery: IV, album five – it’s probably something you’ve been asked a few times before but now we’re at this point in time, three guitarists one album, is there a process that’s really materialised out of having that kind of line up? Do you now have a way of doing things that you know works for the situation that you’re in?
Jake: Both yes and no – when we first get together I never have any idea what’s going to come out of it, none of us do. A little tidbit for you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do a great deal of writing on this album, because I wasn’t feeling it so much and got to that point where I had a conversation with Mark [Holcomb] and he was like “No, you have to write it” but in a positive way – he was very supportive and because of that support I was able to come out of that rut.
Spencer: For real though some of yours are some of my favourite parts on the record though
Jake: Thank you
Can you name one in particular for us?
Spencer: Garden In The Bones – it’s one of my favourite tracks on the entire album and Jake wrote most of it.
Speaking of Bones, in relation to the other single that’s been released Blood Eagle, it immediately shows a great deal of variety on the record; utter brutality and other softer sections – do you look for a sort of a middle ground ever or do you always try to push it to a high or a low?
Jake: It’s still a case of it being more experimental; with all of the various demo stages, we sit down and we throw metaphorical darts at a wall – we kind of have this unspoken synergy, we know how far to go without derailing the song and pushing it into bizarre territory and keep it as a coherent song and single piece, but we know the limits.
Periphery: III had a motivic re-occurrence throughout, a theme that kept coming back – is there something like that on Periphery: IV that the untrained ear may not have picked up on?
Jake: Yeah there’s this one thing that starts in Reptile, in the orchestral section which I wrote the melody, which Spencer’s vocals reprise in Garden In The Bones, different lyrics but very similar melodies. We tried to do it in Satellites as well but it didn’t work out.
How different has it been with the situation you’re in now with Nolly (bass) where he’s not a part of the band any more, but still plays on the record and mixes it all down – it’s a pretty unique place to be in.
Spencer: Yeah it’s weird ‘cause we feel like he’s been in the band since day one so it does feel like there’s a bit of a hole there – he was a great guy just to hang out with and it was great to have someone with his technical abilities as well.
Jake: He’s the sensible one as well! It’s one of those where he left a hole big enough that we didn’t want to fill it!
Periphery IV: Hail Stan out now via 3DOT Recordings.
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