Are you guys stoked to be playing Soundwave next year? Mark: of course! We love touring Australia - the crowds are great, the country is beautiful, and Soundwave in particular is such a huge landmark occasion for us as a band. It's an honor to be sharing the stage with such amazing and established bands. Definitely a career highlight for us.
This won't be your first time in Australia, what memories do you guys have from being here previously?
Yes - we've been twice before. My greatest memories from last time had mostly to do with the fact those 3 shows for the LXD tour in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, were my first 3 shows with Periphery, and my first ever time in Australia. We had a blast getting to do a bit of tourism in each city, got to visit the Roadrunner Records headquarters in Melbourne, and hang out with our buddies in TesseracT, who opened for us on those dates. We also did a couple meet and greets in each city, where I got to see first-hand how many Australian fans we had. Crazy!
How would you compare Australian audiences to others around the world.
I would have to say they're some of the most expressive, enthusiastic bunch of fans we've played for. The last show of our last Australia outing in Melbourne last year was insane - they packed the HiFi and it still to this day, is one of the craziest shows in our existence. I've also noticed that the fans there are very passionate, as in knowing very minute details about our career and music. Alot of kids came up to us telling as that they've been Periphery fans since the online demos starting popping up in 2005 or so.
Will you be up to anything else while your over here apart from the festival?
Tourism. Definitely a good bit of tourism. I live for that and we're blessed that we get to see such an amazing place for our jobs. So I'll definitely do a good bit of old-fashioned walking and getting lost in each city, maybe venture out and do some exploring of the countryside if I have time. Aside from that, I look forward to seeing some bands on the festival and hanging out with some of our friends in Twelve Foot Ninja, an Australian band we played with last time around.
Is there anything you guys feel seperates your sets on stage from other bands?
We're not consciously aware of that honestly - I think most of our focus goes into trying to put on the best visual show possible while still trying to give the material justice by playing it tightly. That's about it. We're not looking to reinvent the wheel or anything in terms of live performance, but I love going to a concert and, as a fan, seeing a band go absolutely apeshit on stage, throw down and destroy, while still playing everything as accurately as you'd hear it on a record, or close to it. I think all 6 of us strive for that in every possible way.
What do you think separates your band in general from other bands of the same genre.
Again I'd have to say alot of our intent is more introspective and doesn't have so much to do with comparing ourselves to like-minded artists. I honestly haven't heard too much of bands from the same genre - I need to get with the times! But again we more just try and focus on what makes our music more pleasing to us and us only; whether that means writing a 16 minute prog metal song, a 3 minute rock song, a ballad, or what have you. We've never felt any sort of boundary or restraint creatively, and I suppose that in and of itself would be a characteristic that embodies the culture in Periphery.
What is the bands best memory as a whole since being together?
Theres a ton but some of my highlights include the release of our last record, "Periphery II: This Time It's Personal". It was such a long ordeal recording that album and to finally have it out was the biggest breath of fresh air. As far as tour memories, playing the Philippines in April was absolutely a dream come true for me, being from the Philippines. Touring Europe with Dream Theater and Between the Buried and Me on seperate occasions this year was also a huge honor. It's hard to choose! We're the sort of band that's overly thankful for everything, haha.
What is the craziest tour story you guys can tell me?
If you're looking for scandal you may want to search elsewhere, seeing as we're pretty reclusive, homebody-type guys, haha. I think alot of people would be surprised to know that none of us really party too hard or get into too much Motley-Crue-like trouble on tour. As far as crazy experiences go on tour, in Europe last month we played Munich, took 3 flights immediately afterwards to get to Umea, Sweden, played that night with Meshuggah, then immediately took a tiny private plane back to Stockholm, only to fly back to Milan and play that night. So basically it was 72 hours straight with zero sleep, in airports, tiny rickety planes, and just being shoved around the continent, haha. It was brutal but I look back on it happily.
Whats next for the band (after Soundwave)?
Well we don't have any concrete tour plans as of yet, but we will definitely be writing. We're always working on new material and next up we're focusing on a concept album tentatively entitled, "Juggernaut". We've already been writing like crazy for it, and it'll be nice to have some downtime to focus more on that. For fans of ours, I can only promise that it will be massive. And weird. Plenty of weird.
If you could tour with any band, anywhere in the world, who and where would it be?
If we're talking "out of this universe", "never gonna happen" type stuff, I'd probably say Pantera... and in Asia or something. Realistically - hmmm, any band? I'd probably have to go with a band like the Deftones or Meshuggah. And probably Japan, or South Korea, since those are areas I've always wanted to play music in. Australia would also be a lovely destination! Interview by Chris Rainback.
