SATYRICON Frontman: 'The Age Of Nero' Has 'Great Sound And Timeless Quality'

Cameron Edney of Inside Out webzine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven of the Norwegian black metal band SATYRICON. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

Inside Out: "The Age of Nero" is a great step forward from "Now Diabolical"; I have been blasting it all afternoon. No doubt you are very pleased with the result?

Satyr: I have to admit… I think this could very well be the ultimate SATYRICON album, we felt that stronger and stronger as we progressed in the song writing. To me, making your best record and making your ultimate record are two completely different things. We've always set out to climb onto a higher mountain and make our next album the best so far... I think that the "The Age of Nero" is journey like, it's not just a compilation of some really good songs, but it's definitely an "album," and sonically it's very well produced and doesn't follow any ongoing trends. "The Age of Nero" is filled with dynamics, variation, and different levels of intensity and tempos. It has great sound and timeless quality, and that's our feeling anyways! This record has three songs that seem to have a very immediate effect of people, something that they'll instantly like whilst there are other songs that keep growing on you. This gives me the feeling that "The Age of Nero" is a record that people will like just as much in 2018, even more in the future, than they do now. I feel that "The Age of Nero" has real soul and a character of its own, its own unique identity.

Inside Out: Hailing from Norway, you jetted off to California to record the latest album in the same studios I believe METALLICA used to record "Death Magnetic". What were your main reasons for recording "The Age of Nero" in the United States?

Satyr: It was easy; we talked about that early on. This could be the ultimate SATYRICON record; this is our chance... that is how we felt! We thought, what do we do to secure that outcome? I, as a producer, I need to team up with someone not only who has a good track record but someone that has the same idea of good and bad when it comes to sonics as I do. Joe Barresi [producer/engineer] was someone I had met seven years ago and he's really old school. He uses rock-solid gear and tries to do things naturally instead of adding things artificially. Joe has a vast range of experience from his work with KYUSS and the QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE to his work with pop rock "ordinary stuff." I think it was really important for us to step out of our comfort zones. SATYRICON have recorded six albums plus a couple of EPs in the comfort of our home environment in Norway and also our neighboring country Denmark, having done a lot of work there. Those were all very good experiences, but we needed something fresh. As many good bands as there are coming out of Scandinavia and many good studios, music as a profession isn't really respected and treated in the way that it is in America. If you're in an environment and all you have to worry about is performing as an artist, it will bring out the best in you whilst if you are in Scandinavia you can certainly do good records, I'm not saying that its hard to do good records there but the stage is more set as an artist to bring out the very best in you in America, it's not considered as much a hobby there as it is a profession.

Inside Out: Let's talk about the writing process for "The Age of Nero". Did you walk into this album with a clear vision of what you wanted to do or was the process a little more spontaneous?

Satyr: Once I started connecting with what I was feeling and knew how I wanted to approach this, I started writing songs that combined atmospheric epic ground with more straight-on, aggressive, catchy stuff. I started to narrow it down to some key factors that I thought were flowing in the direction that appealed to and interested me. Anyone can make a record with seven or eight songs in the same style; I wanted to have this album nicely tied together through our signature playing styles and my compositional styles. I never set out to make a record to be slow or mid-paced or fast or atmospheric… I want a record to hold all of these qualities and then there is going to be one or two factors that become a little more dominant than the others. The two key factors on the record to me are that it's a very muscular album, it's very powerful and big and I think that it's a key factor and it's an atmospheric album. They came to me and led the material in that direction and it felt natural for the rest of the stuff that followed.

Inside Out: The metal scene in Norway back in the early nineties was thriving and was still very much an underground scene, what are the biggest differences you notice in the scene these days from when SATYRICON first formed?

Satyr: Everything… we are one of a few bands that are left. We recently hosted some listening parties, were we basically invited fans to come and listen to the record. I attended most of them myself and the ones I couldn't get to Frost [drums] attended. We went to different cities, went to local rock bars and played the new record a couple of times for our fans and a lot of band people came out to these listening parties as well. In Bergen, the guys from IMMORTAL came out and from what I understand they are doing a new record and will be doing some shows. ENSLAVED are still going, I don't know what's happening with MAYHEM now but supposedly they will continue but they have recently lost their songwriter and there guitar player. Many of the smaller bands weren't around at that point and they aren't really doing anything. I really feel like there are few bands that are still doing this to their highest level anymore and I think that SATYRICON stands as an entity on its own. We really enjoy the company of the people we grew up with, and if we are not on tour or recording, we certainly enjoy spending some time with these guys and feed off of each other as human beings and as artists, but it's not like we're tied together like we all used to be. People are obviously busy in their own lives and doing other things. We are doing what we've always done but we have been so busy that we don't have time to hang out with people like we did in the old days! Everything is certainly different from when we first started SATYRICON.

Fan-filmed video footage of SATYRICON's December 2, 2008 concert in at Rolling Stone in Milan, Italy can be viewed below.