Best Satyricon Songs

[Aron Eugine]

WhenI think of Satyricon, the first thing that comes to mind is a funny conversation I had with a rather enthusiastic and boisterous New Yorker outside of an Immortal show a couple years ago. We were having the typical waiting-in-line-talking-about-metal deal when Satyricon came up and in his strong New York accent the guy bellowed, "Satyricon is da best yo! Satyr! Satyr is my fuckin' BOY YO!!!" Fair enough. So, before I talk about the rest of the album, can we talk about how awesome "Phoenix" is? In a brilliant and clever move, Satyricon has taken the risk of creating a haunting, catchy, and melodic song right in the middle of their album. Though I wouldn't necessarily call it a "Black Metal Power Ballad", as MetalSucks characterizes it, it's definitely a departure from what purists would expect from most early-90's Norwegian Black Metal bands.Not that melody is anything new to the genre, as it was Emperor who used it to perfection on "With Strength I Burn" on their classic Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk. But I have to say this track totally caught me off guard and I then found myself listening to it a second time, then a third, and so on. For me, it resembled what Satyricon would sound like if they made an album with My Dying Bride. It also reminded me of "Valkyrie", the Misfits-esque track off Darkthrone's new album, The Underground Resistance. I still can't (and don't want to) get that chorus line out of my head:The Morning New, The Morning Red,

The Fiery Promise,

Made Swirling Smoke Wheels Round her Head.

Dedication

To the Queen of Souls,

Her Lost Disciples,

And When the Fire's Work is Done,

The Phoenix now RebornOk, so now that I've gotten that out of the way, onto the rest of the album. Unfortunately, much of it is rather predictable. I'm not complaining about their sound itself of course. Though they've had a more polished hard rock side to their music for a long time now, people still like to complain about how they abandoned their old-school sound. Honestly, anyone who does this needs to grow up. One of the (many many many) reasons Dark Medieval Times is so awesome is because they didn't try to just remake it over and over and over again. But the lack of TROO-KVLT aesthetics is not the problem with this record.The problem with this album is not that it takes too many risks, but that it takes far too few of them and sounds like a less inspired rehash of The Age of Nero. A slightly less glossy production would be a nice change, as some of this record could have used a more raw and dirty texture to make it more interesting. This may also have allowed the riffs to stand out a bit more as well. If anything, the success of a song like "Phoenix" should encourage the band to continue taking risks with their sound, much like Enslaved has done. Sure, the album has a few other highlights, and the album flows nicely from end to end. But once you reach the end, you tend to find yourself more moderately pleased than blown away.6/10Favorite Songs: "Nocturnal Flare", "Phoenix", "Walker Upon the Wind", "Ageless Northern Spirit"In this article:satyricon Sponsored Links from Around the InternetjQuery('.show-comments').click(function() jQuery(this).hide();jQuery(this).next().show(););Show Comments / Reactions You May Also Like Live FootageANTHRAX's FRANK BELLO Goes Black Metal: Watch His First Show With SATYRICONBello is their live bassist for this summer.

I admit I am struggling giving Satyricon and this album a musical trend since the music has nothing to do with what they used to play about a decade ago. Their sound is somewhat colder and clinical whereas their earlier releases were warmer and more colored. It remains in the black metal vein, but there is more than that. A lot more than that. The tempo showed on this album has slowed down a lot compared to Nemesis Divina. None of the songs are outstanding on this new album, but some of them manage to give a glimpse of what Satyricon could be if the Frost and Saryr were able to line up eight songs of identical high level. For instance Repined Bastard Nation has an incredible riff and some great soloing and is really an killing song, but on the other hand songs such as the opener With Ravenous Hunger and Fuel For Hatred lower the quality of this album. Some average female vocals accompany Satyr throughout some of the songs but they fail to bring that extra something those kind of vocal performances are supposed to create. Black Lava clocking at 14'31 is the last song on this album and something really special is given off this song. It's as if the band had assembled the best from every song to come to that one.

Niclas Mller-Hansen of Sweden's Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven of Norwegian black metallers SATYRICON. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metalshrine: The [new, self-titled] album [from SATYRICON] was recorded using analog equipment. A lot of bands seem to be doing this now. What's your thoughts about it? I get the feeling that it's kinda coming back.

Satyr: Well, I'm actually under the impression that it's not coming back. I might be wrong, but my impression is that music throughout the last three or four years is disgustingly processed. I have talked to people that have worked with some of the true superstars. There's this Norwegian production bureau called Stargate and they do a lot of stuff for Rihanna and so on and they are obviously very good at what they do, but I've talked to them as a musician and about sound and some of the things that I intensely hate about modern-day music productions and they explained to me that it's what the artists want, management wants, record company wants, radio wants. They don't want it to sound real, they want it to sound super processed and as a producer, that's what you cater to, of course. I guess that's the shocking part of it. I drove around once in a car with one of the instrument endorsers of SATYRICON and he played me some record from a very famous metal band, that was heavily processed. Everything sounded very powerful and ultra-tight, but to me, it was lifeless and dead. He was very enthusiastic and he was blasting it in the car. It was impressive, but I still hated it. I just said, "OK, fine," but I thought to myself, "How can you not hear that this sounds so fake, so manufactured?" I was hoping that this SATYRICON record, working they way that we worked, not only would it communicate the emotions within the songs, the atmosphere, but also perhaps somehow contribute to what I'm hoping will become more of a trend, because that would be one of those good trends. For bands to do things more organic. That's not something new to SATYRICON, but the difference is that it's been so much hardcore and uncompromising on this record, compared to previous records, and that's perhaps because we felt these songs needed it more than what we've done previously. But it was also because I've never felt so strongly about these things as I do now. When I had discussions about the record with A&R legend Monte Conner, and he's a music nerd like me, and I said to him, "I think a lot of the sounds you've been hearing from metal bands in the last few years are gonna be tomorrow's embarrassments, just like when people look at photos of themselves from the '80s." I think a lot of people a few years down the road, when they listen to their records from like 2012, are gonna go. "What were we thinking?" Then Monte said "I think you're right. I actually think a few years down the road, a lot of the records that are popular today, are gonna be remastered to make them sound more analog," which is the complete fuckup of some of the classic analog records that are being remastered in a way to make them sound more digital and sterile. I think the purist approach on the record helped create the record that it is. We thought that if we were gonna get this to come across the right way, and to have these songs provide that kinda authentic language, like we feel when we play them, we had to make the record, to a large degree, like it feels that you're in the room with SATYRICON when you hear the record. That's what we tried to do and I think we succeded. There's a reason why it's self-titled, because we really feel it defines the mentality and the musical philosophy of the band in terms of song writing and it shows what SATYRICON is about and it also points at the future. A part of what defines SATYRICON is a progressive attitude.

Satyr: I never stay in such a way that I stay there all the time. What I did was that I talked to an engineer friend of mine, where I know that he was using this old cabin lodge on his private property and it's actually dated from 1550, because you can see it in the wood and from the building techniques. He had almost like an antique garage in there where he would set up his music and being in there is so cool. I said, "I love the atmosphere in here and to have something like this and do the SATYRICON record in," and he said, "You can do that!" I was, like, "No, we can't do a record in here." But he just answered, "I think you could." I started going through the process of myself, since having done this for so long and being used to be working in some of the best studios in the world, and then all of a sudden try to move into something that was actually made to either store food in or to keep goats or pigs in. We actually did most of the album in there. We were in the studio for about six months and five months were in there and we did six to eight months of pre-production and rehearsals in there as well, to get used to the place and feed off of the vibein the song writing and get acquainted and just feel at home. I'm very glad that I did that and I think a part of how I convinced myself into taking that chance, was based on experiences like the "Now, Diabolical" record, which I'm very pleased with, but there are things on the record that I would've wanted differently and I think part of why certain things didn't come out they way I wanted them to was that I wasn't where I needed to be mentally because I hated the place where I was working so much. In hindsight, I realized that it affected me more negatively than I understood at the time.

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