Yesterday, we posted about Sumerian Records founder Ash Avildsen going on the Jasta podcast talking about Periphery and claming the band are "their own worst enemy" in response to Periphery guitarist Misha Mansoor's claims that he couldn't make a living off of just royalties and touring.
During the Jasta interview, Avildsen revealed the band is no longer with the label and was planning on self-releasing their next album. Avildsen also claims the band "get too precious for their own hits," and talked about how he had to convince Periphery to play one of their more accessible songs, "Jet Pack Was Yes" on a big arena tour with Deftones.
Avildsen also claimed that the band could make way more money if they toured more and wrote a more accessible hit. Here is the money quote:
"They are incredibly artistic, they’re incredibly creative and they still know, yeah we have some singles, right? Periphery could be an arena band. They have the…Spencer has a voice, he can sing it, they did a great cover of Florence and The Machine, which really shows the depth of them if they did want to write songs that could get on radio and big playlists but they only write for themselves, period. Most artists will say that, 'I’m just playing music for myself' and what I say to that is, you can do that at home, but then don’t worry about making that a living."
Avildsen made it clear he wasn't dogging the band, just speaking his opinion. He also talked about the few times he had would have to convince the band to do things that ended up being the correct business move, like pushing the band to make their Juggernaut release a double album.
Now, Misha Mansoor has chimed in with a response and he couldn't be more professional about it. Responding to a Facebook post linking to an article with Ash's comments on MetalSucks, Misha writes:
It's pretty simple: We want Periphery to be a fun passion project and creative outlet. We don't really care about being a massive band or making crazy money with the music, and that has been our approach since day one.
Ash is a businessman, and wants his bands to be financially successful. Sometimes that means our interests are at odds, and contractually we had set things up to be in our favor so we couldn't be forced to make decisions we didn't want to. With that said, and even in Ash's own words in the interview, when he came to us with good ideas, we definitely listened!
Ultimately we had a good run with them, and I'm grateful for our time on the label, but we have wanted to try starting our own label for a while now, and we finally have the means to do so!
Everything Misha writes makes total sense. Ash, coming from a business perspective has his own viewpoint and Misha, coming from a more creative perspective has his.
Ultimately, the decisions for the band will be made by the band. Whether its in their best interest to self-release their next album or not, only time will tell.
