PERIPHERY: Interview with Misha Mansoor

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You guys said that Clear is sort of an experimental record. What does it actually mean? Did you want to make some sort of a test for your next album?

Not really a test for the next album. You know, we always talk about sort of a creative ideas that we can try out, and that one was actually started by conversation with Steph Carpenter from Deftones. When we were forming the band, he was saying like because we were in sort of a unique situation, we were I guess discussing band’s dynamic and I was expressing Periphery like sort of a band of producers, for better or for worse we all came to writing THAT ideas and whatever. And he said that he really liked seeing everybody is side of something, and he had thought that would be very interesting just for him, because he’s a fan and he was like “I’d like to see everybody’s sort of interpretation of the song.” Like if we all started off with an idea, how would that song evolve if every member did it. And although we didn’t follow that exactly to a tee, we did kind of take that general concept, it did start have us questioning that within ourselves. You know, when it’s time to start working on a new album we usually want to give the fans something to chew on, because we know that we might take a little bit of time. Especially with this album, we knew we were gonna take more time off than we ever did before. So we thought this would be a very good opportunity to try this experiment. So that was a sort of basis of the experiment, but it wasn’t really any sort of test for the new album. It was just sort of an opportunity to get a new material out, and also maybe to find something out about ourselves in the process.

Have you managed to make any new discoveries in terms of songwriting or production with Clear?

I’d say that we did sorta serendipitously discover some ways to communicate in band dynamics that are maybe healthier. Just because having this line-up and writing with this line-up in this full capacity is sort of a newer thing and there was a big fear of, like, too many cooks in the kitchen. But even though this wasn’t the impetus for the whole project, we did find out that like we are good at communicating and we are respectful at each other’s wishes. And it just showed that self-producing this next record could work very well, because of how rational everybody is in the band and how much everybody is happy to sorta keep everybody else happy and not be selfish or egotistical  about certain aspects of things that they write. So even though that wasn’t necessarily the goal, I’d say that’s something that we did discover and that’s linking in with the sort of production aspect and whatever, but as far as like techniques and whatever we are always working on that stuff. Whether we are working on an album or not.

Speaking of the next album, you are in the process of its inception. What can you tell me about new songs? How much of the work has been done on the new album?

We are in the writing stage still, so we are all getting together and sort of putting the material together. And that’s actually been going very, very fast. We are kind of at this point where we’ve just been meeting up and like writing, you know. Maybe I’ll meet up with a few of the guitarists. I’ve been sort of taking on the pre-production, manager of things just because it’s easy for people to come over to me and kind of turn their riffs into songs with them, but it’s not unlike what I do with the other bands, you know. I’m doing it with my band who I communicate well with and have good chemistry with and so we are creating these songs together. And it’s all coming together very fast and very easy. You know, sometimes it’s all of us in a room and that was one thing that we thought might be little bit of recipe for disaster, because it could a lot of people yelling at each other. [laughs] But it’s all been very painless. We kinda took stock yesterday of how much work we’ve done, because we’ve just kind of been working just to work, you know. Not with any goal in mind to write whatever comes out. We have a lot of material already, and we kinda had planned writing through the next month, month and a half. So it’s really interesting to see how much material we are gonna have, because already we have too much. [laughs] But we are still just in the writing stage. The plan is after this, after everything comes together and is complete we pick sort of the best songs and put those on an album. But we’ll also rehearse for the first time ever, we never really had the time to do that, but we wana kind of rehearse and get the feel for these songs. And then I believe we are gonna officially start recording stuff in June. It’s the plan. You know, we’ll start tracking drums and getting everything finalized around then and hopefully have everything sort of ready and mixed by the end of August, early September, if all goes to plan. So we’re still fairly early in the whole process.

Are you aiming for a 2014 release?

That’s really for a label and management to decide. We are planning on delivering this album by the end of August. We don’t really have a hard deadline right now. We were very adamant about not  having a hard deadline because we know if it’s not ready we are not gonna turn it out. That’s happened with both albums, so we have a lot of ample time this time around. But, if it’s ready in August it might be out end the year 2014, but the label and management might also say that it might be a better idea to put it out first thing 2015. So that’s really up to them to decide, our expertise is making the music, their expertise is marketing and selling it. So, we will just defer to their advice on that.

You told that you will be producing the next Periphery album all by yourselves and that you have a specific vision of what you want to do with this album. Elaborate on that.

I think on many levels when it comes to the sound, we kind of know what sonically we want to do. We did a test track with a producer, with David Bendeth, and it was very educational experience, and it was a good thing. But it also showed, even though he did a great job, it showed that we were going for something very, sorta, unique. We know exactly what our taste is. So rather than having someone sort of have to guess and approximate what that taste is, we might be better off trying to capture those tones ourselves. And that combined with the fact that we’ve been sort of writing together and communicating really well when it came to writing as a band, we thought that we could handle all that. Writing-wise, it’s coming together in sort of a darker, more epic feel. I don’t know what the actual album is gonna sound like, but we’re gonna have to see what tracks actually make it on there. But I think everybody kinda reacts to the music that they’ve written before. Our first album was more so of like “Hey, we’re here! Look at what we can do!” Our second album was more playful and melodic and upbeat. I think it’s like a video game soundtrack. And the new one is more like an epic movie soundtrack to a dark, ominous movie. And that just seems to be the reaction, that just seems to be the vibe that everybody is going for. We never really had a conversation about it. I think it’s almost a reaction to our last album, being more of upbeat and melodic. So, that’s the sort of the direction that we seem to be headed right now.

Last time it was personal, what is it going to be this time?

This album is gonna be called Juggernaut.

Is Juggernaut the final name of the upcoming record?

Yeah, Juggernaut is the name and it’s going to be a concept album. We’ve been working on a lot of themes musically and lyrically, and melody lines for vocals that all tied together. We wanted to do a concept album for a long, we wanted to do an album called Juggernaut that would gonna be a concept album, and it’s all just kind of coming together. It may not have all of the tracks that we initially thought were gonna go with Juggernaut, but that’s only because we’ve written stuff that we like more. But honestly, it’s kind of a way for us to change things up a little bit, get a little bit out of our comfort zone and change the dynamic of how we approach songwriting. We’ve generally approached songwriting more as is each song is its own little world, and it’s different from all the other tracks, that’s been how we go about creating a song. But now it’s sort of on a bigger scope, like telling the story over the whole album. And we had to find the material that best fits  that story, and we have to like present it in the way that makes the story flow and the themes work together. It’s a very different approach, and it’s been kind of a way to keep things fresh and interesting for us.

On the previous two albums you had Jeff Loomis, Elliot Coleman, Guthrie Govan, John Petrucci and Wes Hauch contributing on some of the songs. Have you talked about possible guest appearances for the new album? Do you have any names?

We don’t. Because that’s like literally the last thing that happens. The way it works is we write our album, we write songs. Usually we’ve had guest guitarists, we had a guest vocal appearance as well. But generally the way it happens is once the album is kinda getting finalized in the writing stage and we know hows everything is gonna go and how everything is gonna flow, then we look: “Oh, I could do a solo here. Someone else could do a solo here.” And then we try to think like who would be very appropriate with this section and that section, and we try to get them. So it’s very much like the end of the process, and although in theory there are a lot of people I would like to get involved, (1) I don’t know there would be space, because if we end up writing and there is no space for guest spots we’re not gonna open it up just for the sake of having guest spots, and (2) we need to have a spot that would be appropriate for those people that we are interested in, because there is no point of just having someone just to have someone. I think we’ve done a good job with that in the past. I really love the three guest spots that we had on the last album. We weren’t really trying to write solos for those sections. They would have probably remained blank  otherwise. So we contacted some of our friends and tried to get them to fill those spots up. They were all pretty much like “Okay.” Guthrie makes a lot of sense to have on Have a Blast, John Petrucci makes a lot of sense to do this big, epic solo at the end of Erised. And Wes Hauch to do a short and sweet solo over Mile Zero. As I said, it just sort of worked out that way.

What’s your take on covering Florence and the Machine’s Only If for a Night for the Sumerian Ceremonials tribute? What was the biggest challenge while working on it?

Honestly, that whole thing was kind of spearheaded by Spencer and Matt. My only involvement with that was doing a loop solo at the end. I think that they did a fantastic job with it, because it was kinda something that we were approached about and Spencer and Matt were very inspired by that idea. So you know, its good to have members who can all write and produce, and arrange and stuff. [laughs] That’s Spencer’s and Matt’s work there. And they worked with Taylor Larson who did our last album, who also did a fantastic job on that. So, I can almost comment on that as an outsider ’cause I had very little to do with that, but I thought that they did a fantastic job with the cover.

How was it playing this year’s Progressive Nation at Sea? What are your memories like from this event?

Oh, man. It was crazy. We did that cruise after like almost a month over in Australia and Asia, and we were pretty jet-laged and tired. [laughs] We caught a flight from Shanghai to New York and then from New York to Miami, so there’s a lot of traveling and a lot of jet lag, but it was amazing. It was one of those sort of surreal experiences. We’ve just come from China and Japan where it was blizzard snow and freezing cold, and all of a sudden we are in Miami on like white sand beaches, and then you are hanging out with all of your friends, with all these bands and musicians that you look up to. It was just very hard to put into words, but I think I was most surprised by the fact that a lot of people were on that cruise, like I wondered if progressive music would really have such a dedicated following. But that cruise was packed and I thought it’s going to be only guys, but there were actually a few girls – it wasn’t at total a sausage fest, which is nice. [laughs] It shows the kind of music is kind of expanding to the public, because it’s not just nerdy guys who are into progressive music anymore. I think that’s a good sign. But the whole experience was surreal and all I can say is I hope it happens again and that they take us. Because we will do it in a heartbeat.

I think that Mike Portnoy mentioned that there will be another cruise next year.

If there is, I hope they take us. I know a lot of festivals don’t like to take bands two years in a row, but even if we have to wait a year after that, seriously any time, any opportunity we get to play a cruise again… I mean like, it’s kind of surreal. It was such a great experience, I wish it hadn’t ended that quickly, you know. [laughs]

I noticed that you are a tech freak. How does this world of gadgets help you in your work?

I like any thing that can sort of push what you can do both in the studio and live, and I like using technology to my advantage. So is it debate of like whether it’s cheating or not, like for example we’ve got our computer changing all our patches for us. It’s extremely convenient and allows us to do some things that would be very difficult to do if we were using a traditional pedalboard setup. But I like thinking that technology is good and you should use it to your advantage creating exactly the music you want to create. So I’m always looking out for new sort of gear, like this thing EverTune Bridge for guitar, which makes your guitar never goes out of tune. I don’t really use it live so much, but in the studio – my God – it just makes everything goes so much faster, because anyone who has ever recorded guitar in the studio knows that you spend half of your time tuning your guitar. So that makes my life very easy. [laughs] And then the other thing is, that same guitar I have that has EverTune Bridge on it has three temperament frets which makes the intonation perfect. So with that guitar when I record, we don’t even need to check the tuning, and it even doesn’t matter if it was cold  or if the neck moved a little bit, it’s all tension based and if tension is correct then the intonation should be correct and it’s always just perfect. So you can focus entirely on getting the performance as you want. This thing is different. So, I’m always keeping my ear to the ground for new technology that could make the whole work flow a lot smoother.

Do you have any kind of preferences in terms of gear you use?

When it comes to recording and playing live, anyone who knows us knows what a big supporter we’ve been of Fractal’s Axe-Fx – that whole system, Axe-Fx II specifically and XL is coming out which I’m very excited about. That’s a gamechanger, undoubtedly. And you know there was a lot of naysayers when we first came out and there’s a lot of people saying like, you know, they’ll be gone in a year or two, but they still to this day have trouble keeping their units in stock and with good reason, because it just makes studio work and live work the easiest thing compared to a traditional amp setup. For all around the world I can’t even tell how many times we did it and it never failed us. And I use it right now to record, we used it on every release we put out so far. So that’s one of the most important pieces of gear. I’d say Toontrack drums – I’ve been using Toontrack drums since day one for programming and writing, we used the samples with an electronic kit on the first album. And for writing it’s just been such an incredibly indispensable tool. Without those two things our sound would be very different. [laughs] Anyone in the band that you ask would probably give you the same answer for those two sorta pieces of gear. Other things I like – I love Bare Knuckle Pickups, I have my signature set, they are just the best pickups in the world. And I know a lot of people who feel like you’re supposed to say that if it’s a signature gear, but this really is unlike anything else. They are actually seems to be gaining a bit of popularity because I think people are seeing the advantages in what I designed about them. They are genuinely versatile modern pickups, and not djent metal. You can play blues and clean stuff amazingly with them. Noone’s really taken a modern approach to have a sort of versatile pickups that’s comfortable for playing metal type stuff – the clean mid gain tones and still be amazing at that. I also have this Overdrive pedal that I’ve been using in front of my Axe-Fx, it’s Pro Tone Bulb Overdrive Deluxe which is, again it’s the same thing, it’s like the Overdrive has been used in front of amps for a while now, you use Tube Screamers or something to boost a top end and tightens it up. But the truth is, a Tube Screamer is an old piece of technology that was designed to do something else that happens to work well with this situation. So Dennis Mollan from Pro Tone and I built all the pedals. We basically approached this as a modern take on Overdrive. So it’s actually designed to be used in the modern context. It actually works well as a traditional Overdrive, but its main focus is to be boosting modern amps and sorta higher game things, based around sorta optimizing that kind of tone. It’s just unreal. And we just put a new version out that has attack switch on it, so if you are playing live you can just pack in up your tone with the hit of that switch and it’s just the greatest thing. [laughs]

Bulb Deluxe Overdrive (photo credits: Misha Mansoor)

I tried to track down the amount of signature guitars, pedals and pickups signed by your name. I would really appreciate if you could name all of these for me.

Well, I don’t really have any signature guitars with anybody. I have sort of guitars that have my specs.

Like Mayones?

Well they have the signature series but it’s not a signature guitar – it’s just something that I have with similar specs to guitars I’ve had in the past. It’s sort of a retro active thing that was mainly done because I hope to bring them to the US market and then by virtue of that a lot of people were ordering very similar specs. So rather than having to detail all that they just made a model to make it easier. I don’t have any deals with any official guitar companies – for the time being I’m just playing everything because I really love guitars! Not that I’m not open to the right deal some day but until that deal comes I’m playing exactly what I want to play. [laughs]

There are tons of Android and iOS guitar rig and processor apps. What do you think of it? Is there something that you find worth checking out?

I use JamUp, which honestly for me is more of a jamming thing on tour when it’s good to have something to jam and not bother anyone else so we like using those programmes for that and on the road they are good enough to record and get your ideas down. It’s not the same level and it’s not quite as easy to get a tone or as effortless as it is to get on an Axe-Fx but I’ve always said ‘work with what you’ve got’ – you can absolutely get good results with those if you put the time into it. Personally because I have an Axe-Fx I wouldn’t use any of those on a final recording but for iOS JamUp is fantastic. Android has an inherent problem with its modellers in that the Android operating system has latency issues so it’s very difficult to get desirable results with that because you’re gonna feel the latency when you play guitar and that’s the bottleneck with that whole thing and why a lot of these things come out with iOS as opposed to android but in time I’m sure a lot of those things will be remedied. I’ve seen a lot of computer based amp models – there’s a company TSE, that makes a model which is the X50 and that’s one of the best software models I’ve ever heard. It’s really cool; I might not use it for the final product when I have the Axe-Fx but I can use it to track and when I edit I can easily re-amp that with the Axe-Fx after that so you know, technology is coming along.

Speaking of numbers, how many guitars there are in your collection at the moment?

[laughs] I haven’t counted, it’s not really like a competition or anything. I don’t actually know but I would guess in the 30-40 range but I’m not really keeping  a tally of my guitars, it’s not really about that for me. I have actually sold quite a few of my guitars because I want all my guitars to be ones that get used and ones that I can represent well so I’ve thinned down my collection to what I call my essentials or even if they aren’t guitars which are essential or that I play a lot they may have sentimental value to me and I wouldn’t sell them even though they spend most of their time in the case and I’d probably regret it if I sold it – so that explains the somewhat higher number for the essentials, but I’m not trying to amass as many guitars as I can get.

Misha Mansoor (photo credits: Adam Nolly Getgood)

How do you generally go about choosing which guitar will you be using on certain songs or pieces? What does influence these decisions at most?

A lot of it has to do with certain guitars – they all sound different. A lot of them have my Bareknuckle Juggernaut set in there, but that’s a very dynamic set of pickups so they do actually sound very different from guitar to guitar depending on the construction and woods and whatever. So it’s just about what’s appropriate for the track and some guitars I find  just inspire me so I might write on those but record on something else that sounds more appropriate. I have to say that my Jackson Custom Shop 6 has been getting a lot of love lately because that is one of the best sounding and playing guitars that I have and the BMW Blue 7 as well – those guitars have been getting a lot of play time because they are just very balanced across the whole fretboard. There are certainly guitars which are brighter and I might prefer them – some of them have shorter scales so I might not want them as much for rhythm but for leads that sound really sweet. Again it’s about experimenting when you have all these resources where I can always change things up and try them out.

You also work as a producer. Is there something in particular that you are going after when producing?

When I’m producing I want to have good chemistry. That’s the most important thing. Good rapport, good communication. Be on the same wavelength. You don’t want to be butting heads with the people you work with. My main concern with people I’m producing or writing with is that I want them to be happy and I want to feel like I’ve done a good job and gotten them their money’s worth! So – I think a good rapport and communication is essential. Beforehand I’m pretty picky about who I work with – I have to feel like it will be a good experience for both parties. I don’t want it to be a labour of love or feel all miserable like it’s just work and become resentful of the project. It’s a bit easier to be picky when you have a full time band and as a full time producer I wouldn’t always have projects that work out so well. So far, every band that I’ve worked with has been an absolute pleasure and a real learning experience for me too you know. I love working with other musicians – you learn so much.

Whose work as a producer do you appreciate at most?

Man, you know… [laughs] I haven’t been listening to a lot of music lately as I’ve been so stuck in writing. Forrester Savell has done Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus – that dude’s got an incredible mind. John Hopkins tends to do more mainstream stuff but I love his electronic stuff and I feel his sense of melody is amazing. He adds something to the sessions he works with. Although I don’t  listen to a lot of bands that Joey Sturgis does I think it’s pretty amazing that he’s created a niche and a sound and a style that’s very recognisable – you can recognise it from a mile away and it’s influenced a lot of people to chase that sound. Adam Dean was, you know, I don’t know if he’s produced anything recently but he was another one of those guys who sort of made everyone go “Whoa!” I know I’m missing so many people – I think that Jamie King’s work with BTBAM is kind of one of the special things that a band can have, like a band member. I never have spoken to him or met him before but I know that he does such consistent good work with them so he’s like almost the extra band member. What more could you ask for in a producer. I really respect people like that. I’ve also heard some of Will Putney’s stuff and he does fantastic work as well. There’s a lot of very very talented guys – very inspirational. I like to look at the producers even with bands that I wouldn’t really be able to work with because I wouldn’t have so much to offer but I see this all as a learning experience – I don’t really know what I’m doing! People want to work with me for whatever reason but I just want to learn as much as possible and absorb as much from other people. There’s a lot of talent – it’s overwhelming sometimes.

You co-wrote and co-produced the new Animals as Leaders album, with whom you are a long-time friends. What can you tell me about this collaboration? The record itself cracked the Billboard’s 200 chart debuting at the 23rd position.

Well, technically that was my production company with Nolly and the reason I wanted to start a production company with Nolly was that mixing and engineering has never been my strong suit. I’ve always been more on  the creative side and enjoyed that and that’s why writing chemistry is important for me. That’s the stuff that I really enjoy and I feel that pushes me and challenges me. Nolly is very much the same way about engineering and mixing – that’s the stuff that really gets him going so we ended up taking those roles unofficially on Periphery II. We felt like we were doing a lot of those things – Nolly was doing a lot of the engineering work and obviously I was doing a lot of the production work and pre producing and writing and with that we realised it could be a good team to form. We haven’t had time to take on too many projects so Animals As Leaders was the first thing. I actually wrote and pre-produced demos with Tosin over a year ago but the touring schedule has taken over a lot of what he’s done and Nolly ended up retracking everything and engineering – he did a lot of work; I only had about a week and a half to work with him so I only got seven songs done in the time and they wrote a few on their own and they actually went to Diego from Volumes for a few tracks – a fantastic talent and he did a phenomenal job working with them. After those pre-production demos were done   they went to the studio with Nolly and he engineered and mixed everything and produced as well technically, as he got the sounds all over again. If there’s any regret it’s that I couldn’t be more involved with that process but that’s the nature of things when you’re in a full time band, you’re being pulled in so many directions at once but all in all I’m so happy with the songs on that album; I’m so happy with the job that the band did with it and I think it’s their best album that they’ve done to date. It seems to be getting a lot of positive attention. In a way it was testing the sort of way the collaboration was going to work for our album; the sounds that they got are all brand new, unique and natural sounds. It’s just a very pleasant sounding album. So that’s how that collaboration worked – we’re really stoked!

In my recent interview with Javier Reyes from Animals as Leaders I asked him about guitar albums that essentially inspired and influenced him as a guitarist. So, what are your favorites?

Oh this is very hard – I’m gonna miss a lot! When I get into writing mode I don’t listen to anything as I’m always listening to the stuff we’ve recorded. I guess like fundamentally it’s the life changing  albums – Around The Fur by Deftones, Scenes From a Memory by Dream Theater, Chaosphere by Meshuggah, Lateralus by Tool, Sound Awake by Karnivool, Act Two and Act Three by The Dear Hunter, This Binary Universe by BT, In Unity and Inside by John Hopkins… Man, who am I forgetting! Jaga Jazzist’s What We Must.

Allan Holdsworth?

I forgot Holdsworth and Guthrie obviously. Guthrie – everything’s he’s touched. Holdsworth – I don’t love every song that Holdsworth has put out – it’s a big debate between Holdsworth fans; how do you feel about the SynthAxe stuff. The SynthAxe stuff is not my favourite stuff by a long shot when he’s playing guitar, but I do love songs off all his albums and I get asked this all the time but I don’t know that I can pick a favourite. I listen to his entire catalogue but even though I don’t love all his songs, I love the songs that I do so much that’s it’s still the best thing ever! Holdsworth is just a game changer and I was always intrigued by him – I hear some of his stuff and I really didn’t get it. Oh! I forgot to say Calculating Infinity and Miss Machine by Dillinger [Escape Plan], that’s another one of those albums that took me a long time to get into. But that’s the same kind of thing. It was like “Man, I don’t know if I like this, but for some sort of reason I kept thinking about it and I want to check it out again.”

Back to Periphery, were you serious when you said that an alternative name for Periphery was Bort License Plates?

Ah no, no – there was no alternate name for Periphery. [laughs]

What happened with your solo album?

Working on it is kind of an interesting thing. I’m gonna put it out for sure but I want my best work to go to my band – that’s the one who I feel deserves it, so I’m going to finish writing with Periphery but here’s the simple truth of the matter. We have too much material and I alone have too much material to fit on this album and there’s some stuff that honestly at this point, with the way we are writing, that won’t make it onto the next album – we’d keep on pushing it back and it would never get used, so I figure my solo album is a good way to get music out that would never see the light of day otherwise but obviously the band gets first right of refusal on all my material so I’m going to wait until we’re done with the album. I’m going to do all my work that’s required and then once that’s done then I’ll focus on my solo album. I’ll probably just pick the ten strongest songs that inspire me to have them out there in the world, and put it out like that.

Are there any modern progressive metal bands that you listen to and that you think deserve more attention?

I’m the worst music fan – I just don’t listen to a lot of music. I’m just around music so much that I just prefer silence, but there is just so much talent that’s out there. On the Progressive Nation tour we saw this band Haken, who were fantastic. I’ve never really heard them before – I’d heard of them but I watched them and thought Jesus Christ!! I’ll check their last album but I’m definitely not going to be listening to any music until we’ve finished our album but by the time I’m done I’ll be hungry for some new stuff. They were very impressive. I also think more people should know about The Dear Hunter – they are one of my favourite band sin the whole world   – really good musicians and we enjoyed spending some time with them on that cruise. I love their music so much – so inspirational so everybody should be into them and give them more attention and money! I really wish that band would be huge.

With Prog Sphere we tend to release a downloadable Progstravaganza compilation series, highlighting the artists coming from progressive related genres from all around the world. Do you think such a thing is good enough to showcase the potential of many unheard bands on the already overcrowded scene?

I think in this music requirement you have to be creative and it’s always worth taking a chance – like if you’re not gonna do that what are you gonna do? It’s too early to comment on whether that’s a good idea or not but I’m glad that people are trying things and being creative because ultimately something is going to work or at least work well enough for people to be “Alright, well now everyone’s gonna have to start doing that” – but I say if you have an idea you might as well try it. It’s good to be creative and it’s good to think outside the box about how you can reach more fans because as you say, it’s overcrowded and going to be getting more crowded. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of good music but you do have to sift through a lot of music to find someone that’s very special and I do think it’s a good thing overall because due to the music being a lot easier to get out there, a lot of people who wouldn’t have had the capability to get their ideas across now have a voice. I think it’s a good thing and I like that there’s more competition and I like that there’s more people being inspired because that’s what we need and what keeps me on my toes and keeps me wanting to work harder and there will be a piece of music by a new band making me think “I didn’t know you could do that!” and I’ve gotta step up my game so It’s a very healthy thing. It’s equally tough but whatever you can do to get your music out there, a compilation or whatever other ideas you have to let people hear your music, you should certainly go for it.

Want to know how to mix best metal guitars for your band’s next release? Check out Misha Mansoor’s video on that here.

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