Yesterday (19th), we reported Sumerian founder and CEO Ash Avildsen’s recent conversation with Jamey Jasta on The Jasta Show. Avildsen went into great detail about the group as he expressed they are their own worst enemy. Guitarist Misha Mansoor discovered this news and decided to share his thoughts via the comment section on MetalSucks’ Facebook post.
The guitarist explained:
“ 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!”
Later down the comment chain, a fan raised a question to Mansoor’s previous statement on how the music industry has changed and that no one is buying records anymore.
The fan stated:
“ I have to play devil’s advocate here because I’m still unclear about something… weren’t you just recently complaining about not making enough money solely through Periphery and that you’ve had to supplement your income through paid collaborations (signature products) in order to maintain your lifestyle? Now you’re saying it’s totally not about the money and that this is just a passion project. So which is it?”
Mansoor responded:
“Actually everything I have been saying is consistent. If you just read the dumb clickbait headline on the article you might have thought that, but if you actually read the article you would have seen that I’m not complaining about the state of the industry. Simply accepting it for what it is and encouraging people to find other sources of income as they likely will not be able to rely on their band alone for income. Hell I think I even refer to Periphery as a passion project in that very interview hahah!”
It’s amazing that both Ash and Misha are both pretty level-headed, taking the high road and admitting respect for each other. Take heed, metal internet.
[via MetalInjection]
