Have you ever experienced a piece of media that you didn’t know you needed until you had it? That is how I felt when I first consumed the song “Marigold” by the progressive metal band Periphery. Also often considered to be in the genre of “djent”, there is primarily one person who can be thanked for the rise in popularity of this heavier metal subgenre: Misha Mansoor.
As a self-proclaimed nerd, Mansoor lived out his most formative years in the late 90s and early 2000s, where he spent a lot of his free time on blogs and forums having to do with the Swedish metal band Meshuggah. There, he would post clips of songs he wrote on his guitar and jokingly caption them with things like “new djent-y clip”. From there the term rose to prominence
Perhaps this deserves a bit of context. Prior to the mid-2000s, djent was not a recognized genre. The name came to be when fans of Meshuggah, talking about the band’s signature low-pitched, palm-muted guitar tone, often assigned the onomatopoeia “dj” or “djent” (Try it out for yourself; it’s surprisingly addictive). The t was more of a soft t, similar to how some people say “mountain” or “Aunt May”, but it still conveyed the sound well.
People online started acknowledging Mansoor’s ability to write music and riffs, and from there the term “djent” started to become less of a joke and more of an official term describing that certain style of guitar chugs. But because of the community’s mostly online presence, creators and fans of djent were mostly teenagers and 20-somethings who were creating snippets and songs in their homes. For this reason, the sound of the music was not palatable to many listening ears, even among other metal communities.
Misha Mansoor formed Periphery in 2005 with a revolving lineup of members. With their rise to international prominence and the rise of general production quality. people started to appreciate it more and the genre generally became more appreciated and…djentrified.
But as is the case with any great revolution, there will always be nay-sayers. Periphery, as well as other emergent djent bands, had no shortage of critics. Progressive metal as a genre already stretched the boundaries of what could be done. TOOL created vivid atmospheres with synthesizers, Dream Theater would make an 18-minute song with a seemingly random ragtime piano solo in the middle. Now Periphery was taking the concept and translating it to 8- or 9-string guitars with powerful riffs in time signatures that would make jazz musicians blush. Misha Mansoor thought of his band as a progressive metal band, but some critics pushed them solidly into the emerging “djent” genre, as some thought it to be too different to be considered the same thing. This polarizing conceptual shift only brought the band more attention and recognition though, and they took that publicity and ran with it. Mansoor has stated that he is thankful for the “djent revolution”, even though he attributes the word to Meshuggah. Personally I think he's just being humble.
Misha Mansoor has also said that Periphery’s approach to writing music is pretty collaborative. When presenting ideas to each other, Mansoor has stated that “we don’t identify problems, we only identify solutions”. This makes sense, as it’s never fun to present something that you worked hard on and are proud of, only to be told that they don’t like it. Since they have a total of 3 guitarists, they can bounce ideas off of each other and get each other’s opinions on how to make them better.
Misha Mansoor started a revolution in the metal community and created one of the most unique sounds in the modern music scene. Other bands like Animals As Leaders and Tesseract were quick to follow and leave their mark on the community as well, but none of it would be the same without Misha.
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