OF MICE AND MEN

Guitarist Phil Manansala discusses the new album, breaking his hands and his journey into veganism –with head of comms, Faye Lewis

In 1998, Phil Manansala decided he wanted to play guitar. He was 10 years old and right in the midst of the nu-metal explosion. Watching punk bands like Blink-182, Metallica, Linkin Park, Deftones and System of a Down (SOAD) was a clarion call that woke up outcast alternative kids across the world, and Phil was no exception.

“Watching all those bands made me just want to play guitar, ” Phil reminisces. “So, I guess at 10 years old the dream started. My mum ordered me a $25 guitar and the crappiest amp you could ever have out of the back of a magazine and I had fun, ” he laughs.

His beginnings may have been humble – a talent show where he performed a cover of SOAD’s Sugar – but by 2008 he was playing guitar in the post-hardcore, alternative-rock outfit, A Static Lullaby. Initially formed in 2001, in Chino, California, they were the epitome of a local circuit buzz band that had made it big, with major label endorsement from Columbia Records and four albums under their belt.

“They were my hometown band, which was really cool. They were the band that got signed, that were playing all the big sold-out shows to 250-500 people so filling in for them was a dream come true. ”

While A Static Lullaby were lauded by critics for their own brand of alternative rock, it is their cover of Toxic, by Britney Spears, for which they will always be best remembered – a classic that’s stood the test of time.

For Phil however, A Static Lullaby was way more than a band in which to cut his teeth. Touring led to the development of some great friendships, on which the foundations for Of Mice & Men were built.

“I did three or four tours with A Static Lullaby, and that was where I met our drummer, Tino (Arteaga), who was in Lower Definition, I met Austin (Carlile, singer) who was in Attack! Attack! and Aaron, who was in

Jane is Elsewhere. So, it’s pretty insane that the story of Of Mice & Men goes back that far. ”

Forerunners of the metalcore and post-hardcore genre, between 2009 and 2019, the band released six studio albums, with 2014’s album Restoring Force, and 2016’s Cold World reaching number one in the US hard rock charts, while their other albums all charted in the top 10.

The band also scooped up Kerrang!’s Best International Newcomer award in 2013, and in 2014 Phil won Alternative Press’ Best Guitarist award. To top this off, the band went on tour worldwide, playing international music festivals – including numerous Vans Warped Tours and Soundwave Music Festivals in 2013 and 2015.

Of Mice & Men were in a period of fantastic innovation when a new generation of musicians found their own voice. Their music was part of a broader wave of metalcore and hardcore all coming from labels such as Rise, Ferret, Roadrunner, Century Media and Metalblade. The band seemed unstoppable but then disaster struck. “In 2020, I broke both my hands and had to have surgery. I had a mental breakdown, ” Phil recalls.

While Covid-19 ravaged the world, Phil was undertaking physical and mental therapy and for the first time, he was forced to take stock of his life.

“All the years of being on the road and drinking and smoking and letting things slide – it took its toll. I broke my hands – what if I couldn’t play guitar again? Those things went through my mind when recovering from surgery. It really made me think about what’s important, ” he says soberly. “When you ’re living on the road and call a tour bus your home you ’re used to living a certain way. The mental capacity of someone who lives like that has to adapt. ”

Phil emerged from his injury and therapy chastened and self-aware. But the band as a collective had also shifted their priorities and mindsets.

They released their seventh studio album Echo at the end of 2021, through the record label SharpTone (parting ways with Rise in early 2020). The overall tone of Echo is more serious, more focused and, perhaps, more polished than ever.

“We recorded the album on Twitch (a US form of mass live streaming). I’m from the garage scene where you wait for the drummer to kick a sick beat and then you play guitar – you hear something, you feel it, and run with it. I had to adapt from that because it’s difficult without the jam room and feeling pumped. ”

But adapt he did and the result is the combination of gargantuan hooks and melodies with an atypically punk rock backbone. But at its heart is a darkness which Phil attributes to the stresses and strains a long-term bout of solitude put on the personal lives of him and his friends.

Of Mice & Men have come a long way from the scrappy metalcore kids that emerged from Chino back in 2009, overcoming people’s expectations – true professionals with a solid work ethic. Phil has also matured and grown as a person, too.

“I am actually really psyched to talk to you about what I really care about, which is veganism, ” he enthuses. “Being an American, meat is such a huge part of the diet. It’s the base of the food pyramid, it’s everywhere and you can’t escape that. I grew up saying ‘no vegetables on my hamburger’ . I was that kid. ”

While there is an unstoppable rise in veganism in the UK and Western Europe, Phil believes America is still behind.

“In America, people need re-educating on nutrition and diet because it has been turned into a big corporation where meat owns the market and it manipulates and tricks people into thinking they need it and they don’t, ” Phil counters. “It’s such a valuable market. ”

Phil’s wife is from the Netherlands and it was she who encouraged him to reconsider his relationship with meat and dairy.

“She has always been vegetarian, but when she came to America, she said; ‘I will try meat’ , and having tried it, she said; ‘Okay, I am going back to veg’ , ” he laughs. “She then asked me to try to see if I liked it.