Periphery's new record Periphery IV: HAIL STAN might have a silly name, but it's by far their best record musically to date. The record is their first outside Sumerian Records and sold 9,600 in the first week. For comparison, their 2016 album Periphery III: Select Difficulty sold 14,850 and Alpha and Omega sold 35,000 collectively.
In a recent conversation with Ola Englund, Periphery founder Misha Mansoor said he feels like the band has hit its popularity ceiling. Which isn't a bad thing – he adds that Periphery has become a passion project for he and the rest of the band, who have found other venues of income.
“I feel like we’ve hit our ceiling, if I’m honest, yeah, probably. It’s metal, you know, I think there’s maybe a little bit more, you know. We’ll see what happens with this one [their new album], I have no expectations, honestly.
I think we’ve seen the majority of our growth. Maybe I’m wrong, but I also like where we are. It’s fun, we get to play fun shows. If we grow more, it will be great, but if we don’t, it’s kind of at the point now where I’m not relying on Periphery in any financial way.
It can really just be a passion project, and I love that, man. I’m sure now you have that relationship with music now that, like, I’d say your YouTube career and your guitars are probably your main focuses and your main sources of income.
The music industry just be, like, ‘Yeah, I like to do it,’ and that’s why we started, right? When we started, I was, like, ‘Oh, man, this is a cool thing I can do. Look I made a song.’ It was never about, ‘Oh, let me show it off to people,’ or, ‘Let me worry about this album cycle and fulfilling this date’ and blah blah blah.
It’s just, like, ‘Oh, that’s how I felt when I first started writing music,’ and it was just because I could. Now I’m doing it with my friends.”
Still, you should support Periphery's new label 3DOT Recordings here.
