Band Interview: Perimeter

Games, Brrraaains & A Head-Banging Life are very pleased to bring you an interview with alternative metalcore five-piece, Perimeter.

1. How did you get started as a band?

Our band originally started playing together in 2010 when Shane (lead guitar), Devin (bass), and Frank (drums) formed their first music group, playing mostly metal covers by bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, and Bullet For My Valentine. After going through a couple of lineup changes, the group added its now permanent lead singer Marc Cheshire and officially founded the band in 2014.

While looking to expand the group’s dynamic ability with a rhythm guitarist in 2016, Justin Yu auditioned and joined the group, adding not only his ability as a guitar player, but as the band’s new unclean/scream vocalist. It was in 2016 when the band chose the name “Perimeter” after establishing the mission statement of “expanding the boundaries of metal music.”

Our goal as a band is to incorporate many influences, styles, and techniques to hopefully create something new for the fans that has never quite been done before.

2. How would you describe your sound?

We consider ourselves to be alternative metalcore, since we incorporate a mix of pop-style vocals, melodic guitar riffs, upbeat drum rhythms, and grooving bass lines to create our music. On “What Lies Ahead,” our upcoming EP, we focused on a well contrasted tone that was bright yet also warm; it is very soothing unlike some heavier music that sounds more harsh.

When writing our songs, we like to make it an adventure for ourselves and the fans who connect with us. Our lyrics are all about experiencing things from your own perspective, essentially putting the listener in the shoes of the main character. We hope that each song feels like a chapter, making our album feel play out like a book.

3. What bands/artists would you say have influenced your style of music?

It’s interesting because we all share different tastes within the metal genre. Of Mice and Men, August Burns Red, and I Prevail, to name a few, have definitely influenced our recent writing style.

4. Has the rise of YouTube & music streaming helped or hindered you as a band?

We use an independent music distribution service called DistroKid to publish our music. It takes care of the legal hassles, and puts our content on essentially any digital platform you can think of. This has provided our audience with the easiest possible access to our content, which is our priority as a currently unsigned group. We understand that certain media sources such as Spotify and YouTube don’t do the best job of compensating artists through streaming monetization, but we’ve learned that the exposure is far more beneficial than royalties when you’re first starting out.

5. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not making music?

Each one of us is a self-proclaimed video game aficionado, having grown up playing essentially everything from casual Super Smash Bros. and FIFA to the more hardcore FPS and MMORPGs. Marc often streams his retro gaming speedruns through Twitch, and has even made some solid money competing in tournaments and selling gold on old school RuneScape. Firing up the GameCube every once in awhile provides us with a means to blow off some steam, as well as a time and place to sit down and talk business while we’re not playing our instruments.

6. What are your future plans musically? Tours?

After the release of our debut EP “What Lies Ahead” in 2018, we intend to play shows and continue writing new music for our first full-length album. As an unsigned band, we believe it is important to put ourselves out there and pursue as many opportunities as we possibly can. We are very open to touring with any bands and/or artists that will have us, and we hope to share our music with the fans along the way. Our goal going forward is to create innovative music that conveys our message as artists, while at the same time allows us to put on energetic and passionate live performances for all the hard-core fans out there!

We’d like to thank Perimeter for taking the time to speak with us. Keep up to date with news via their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.