As mentioned before oil and Black Metal are Norway’s two biggest “export articles”. Every year thousands of (mostly Italians, go figure) Black Metal tourists come here to camp out at night in the woods, hoping that they get to see a real-life troll or two, as well as to go shopping for Black Metal merchandise.
And we do have our share of Black Metal bands here (perhaps not as many as in the 1990s and 2000s), and most of them are still going strong. But none more than Satyricon.
It can be argued that Satyricon ceased to be a Black Metal Band 20 years ago, and you would be hard-pressed to find someone to argue against that.
Satyricon took a radical turn towards a more “conservative” form of metal with ‘Volcano’ (2002), and their last couple of albums The self-titled album from 2013 and ‘Deep Calleth Upon Deep’ from 2017 are very much classical heavy metal from the Black Sabbath well, albeit with the expected pagan (not Satanic, mind you) twist.
For the last couple of years, Satyricon’s been busy making ambient music for the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo.
But I digress (as usual), ‘Now, Diabolical’ is a masterpiece in tight grooves, great songwriting and sonic bliss represented by the brilliant production and mastering of the album. The single ‘K.I.N.G.’ is arguably the most catchy ‘Black Metal’ song ever made. It comes with a riff that even Tony Iommi would envy Satyr and Frost. And both the title track and «To the Mountains» are relentless in their distorted glory.
To clarify things, I am not a fan of Black Metal. Never been and never will be (too old, too grumpy, too hard of hearing). But I have a soft spot for Satyricon because these guys gather their inspiration from all of hard rock history and make good use of this inspiration in their catalogue of hard-hitting music.
Satyricon is (at least from 2000 and forward) not Black Metal but purely Metal.
Since ‘Now, Diabolical’ they have made a string of albums without a single dud. A good starting point would be to start with the self-titled album from 2013 (recorded in a purely analogue way), and work your way backwards to ‘Now, Diabolical’.
The singer in Satyricon, Sigurd Wongraven, also has his own brand of wine called Wongraven. His wines have received several prestigious awards and are available in most European countries.
But even if you hate all things that are even slightly connected to Black Metal, give the song ‘K.I.N.G.’ a chance. It has a killer riff.
Frode Singsaas | Now Spinning Magazine
