Ragnarok (6:36)

The second part of Periphery II’s “trilogy”, Ragnarok originated from guitarist Misha Mansoor “futzing around” with a variation of the Totla Mad tuning (BbGDFAD). Mansoor wanted the song to have an evil vibe, yet still “groove”, so he channeled “a bit of Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain or something dark like that.” Jake Bowen wrote the closing guitar interlude as a nod to the motif in one of the band’s favorite sections in their previous album’s closing track “Racecar.”

“This isn’t a concept album, but Ragnarok is the next part of the concept”, says Mansoor. “The tuning is interesting. We have one eight-string tuning on the album, which is Ji. My attitude is, I don’t want to use an eight-string unless I’m going to use all eight strings; otherwise, I’ll just detune a seven-string, which is what I did for Ragnarok. But what I do here is drop the seventh string, which is usually an A flat, and I put that to F#, I believe. You can get some dirty-sounding chords with this.

“It’s a kind of Jekyll and Hyde-type song. It’s mean and ugly in the beginning and really beautiful in the end. It repeats a lot of themes, and it’s a progression of the story. It’s cool.”