Korn‘s Jonathan Davis was so excited by ORGY that he created his own record label …
Jake Bowen does insane guitar and doesn’t afraid of anything. If you were a 2000s kid, you’d be all over that reference. Rhythm guitarist and sykk beat selector for Periphery is kind of like off white on beige, if Jake Bowen is to be believed. Raking in the accolades for Periphery III: Select Difficulty from mags and fans and an inconsequential buncha guys called the GRAMMYs, 2016 was a decent enough year for the scattered yet Baltimore-bred djentromatic djentotrons. We talked to Jake, in a futile quest after a glimmer of a rock-star excess.
Hysteria: You guys were at the Revolver Awards, how was the hangover after that?
Jake: I didn’t drink. I was a good boy. I’m not too far from New York City, so I drove in and I decided it wasn’t a good idea to get all crazy there, and then drive home late at night.
I thought they would’ve given you a limo.
Nope. I do things the old fashioned way. I just took my car and I got some coffee, and I listened to some talk radio. It was pretty boring.
What, no hookers and blow, no Gene Simmons style mayhem?
Oh no. You’re not getting that out of me. I am the most boring person. I am the most boring person you have ever talked to. You’re never gonna want to interview me ever again. I’m sorry. I apologise ahead of time.
I will unearth something gnarly about you. Challenge accepted.
Okay, sounds good.
First off, well done on nabbing the GRAMMY nomination for Best Metal Performance.
You’re never really prepared for that. It’s such an unexpected thing. It was something that none of us … It was never on our radar, in terms of stuff that we might accomplish in our careers, so to find that out was really, really awesome. And it made us feel really good about the fact that our music is getting in front of an audience that probably isn’t used to hearing us. If you look at the rest of the bands that are also nominated for Best Metal Performance, it’s a bunch of great bands. You’ve got Gojira, and Korn, and Megadeth, and Baroness, and, I guess, a bunch of bands that really deserve it.
It’s weird to me, such a mix of styles. Then you have Gojira, who are French and probably shouldn’t even be eligible. But the GRAMMYs don’t seem to care about metal, considering they had Howard Jones fronting Killswitch as the band pic, even when he’d left the band two years before!
That kinda stuff happens. I don’t know about Australian media, but in American media we’ll see photos of us up with three lineup changes ago, and sometimes that happens. I guess that it probably shouldn’t happen with the Grammys, but yeah. I think metal has taken a really long time to establish itself as a big form of music. It’s still not recognised in the same category as pop, or country, or rap, or anything like that. I think it’s building up to something. Compared to all those other bands, we’re easily the smallest band. Really, microscopically small compared to the rest of the bands, maybe not Baroness, so much. The rest of those bands are really big bands, so it just seems like they kind of understood that metal is extraordinarily diverse and the nominees this year reflect that.
To the record, Select Difficulty. Does the name reflect the challenge of branching out into different styles?
I wish it was that complex. We just picked it because we’re video game nerds and the video games we grew up on, you could select the difficulty as soon as you start the game.
Oh.
With the whole Periphery One, Two and Three thing, it’s kinda, we kinda think it’s…,and this isn’t to insult any other bands that choose to name their albums that way, it’s just a bit pretentious when you have a numbered system. We like to put silly little subtitles after it just to show our lighthearted side of it. The music is pretty serious, and the amount of detail and work that goes into it is really serious, and we feel like it’s fun to offset that with kind of a goofy title like Select Difficulty, and it really is just because we’re video game nerds. Well, there were other names in the running and it changed probably three times.
What were they?
It was Periphery 3, Fast 3 Furious; and then, Periphery, Tokyo Drift; and then, Periphery 3, Remain Indoors, which sounded kinda serious and ended up being a song title.
You all holed yourselves away in a cabin to write – is that the ideal way to do it?
I think so. I think we finally distilled down what we do to record music to a few core components, and one of them is that. Just all staying in the same place for a month or two and not doing anything else until it’s done. The other big reason why we do that is because we are all spread out. We all live all over the planet, so it would be hard for us to do everything in pieces or over the internet. Misha has a great place where he has this studio setup. So, it was very comfortable and it was just kinda out of necessity, but kinda out of the fact that we write the best and record the best when we’re all … We wake up and make it a job. We stick to a schedule. We go in at 11:00; and then, we work til 7 or 8 in the evening. We have a hard curfew, so that way we don’t burn ourselves out. We found that that’s just the way that works best for us, but who knows if it might change in the future.
Did you ever break that curfew?
Oh yeah, absolutely. Sometimes we get on a roll, and we’re not supposed to go beyond that curfew, but we do anyways. If you’re on a roll you don’t want to lose that momentum.
No…party related incidents?
No, no. Sometimes we’ll go out to the bar and watch whatever sporting event is on and have a couple of beers, but that’s as wild as it gets.
I’m gonna get that saucy story somehow, Jake. Are you looking forward to coming back Down Under?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I always tell people that if ever I have to leave this country; which might happen because we have a horrible man as a President now. I would run away to Australia. It’s a beautiful country. I get along with the people and the culture. The food’s great. You guys have some extreme animals there, but I can deal with that.
PERIPHERY: SELECT DIFFICULTY TOUR AUSTRALIA
With special guests Circles + Polaris
Thursday, February 2: Max Watts, Brisbane
Friday, February 3: Metro Theatre, Sydney
Sunday, February 5: 170 Russell, Melbourne
Tuesday, February 7: Fowlers Live, Adelaide
Thursday, February 9: Capitol, Perth
Tickets available from Destroy All Lines
