SATYRICON Has Written 'A Lot Of New Material' For Next Studio Album, Says Drummer FROST

Metal Sickness conducted an interview with drummer Kjetil-Vidar "Frost" Haraldstad of Norwegian black metallers SATYRICON on April 5 at Le Métaphone in Oignies, France. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether SATYRICON has commenced the songwriting process for the follow-up to 2013's "Satyricon":

"SATYRICON has made a lot of new material now. We have been jamming in our rehearsal place a lot for many months. We don't have any fully finished songs, but we have gotten pretty far with several compositions, and all of them have basically started as jams, or been jams around one or two particular themes that have been made on the guitar beforehand. And we present some of these themes on the shows, so I think it's quite obvious that SATYRICON are now focused on future projects, and that's gonna be a studio album and it's also gonna be a cover album. One will possibly be recorded late this year and the other early next year. And there will be, quite likely, two [SATYRICON] releases in 2016."

On SATYRICON debuting new material on the band's recent European headling tour:

"We are doing these small bits and pieces that we perform on the shows on this tour, showcasing material that will probably end up on the next album. Sometimes we jam parts of songs that we have been working on in the rehearsal place lately. We might even just impulsively jam something on stage whenever we feel like it; we have a spot reseved for that. And it could be that material that we improvise on stage at one of the shows might end up on the album. Who knows?! And that in itself shows a pretty different way of doing things. It's a pretty fresh idea to us, and I guess it's quite unconventional for a black metal band to do it, but this is really part of what SATYRICON is now about."

On SATYRICON's constantly evolving musical direction:

"I think that this is basically about feelings and atmospheres; it's about vibes and it's about an attitude. And the SATYRICON spark, that is always there, no matter whether we play material from [1994's] 'Dark Medieval Times' or [1996's] 'Nemesis Divina', or the last album, or even something totally new that still isn't recorded; we always carry the spirit. Some people will be very locked to styles and standards and convention, and they feel that, you know, if it has a hard rock vibe to it, like some of the new material has, or if it doesn't sound like this album or that album, they don't like it, and they have to be allowed to think that way. But we don't operate that way, and we have noticed that many people follow us on our creative and quite unconventional path, and I think that we need bands like SATYRICON that don't stick to formulas and continuously give the audience what you think the audience wants all the time. You have to challenge your listeners a little. Like the great bands of earlier times did that, we ourselves liked that way of working, and we want to operate that way. And we also feel that the good albums that are done are done. You can always listen to them again; we don't need to make second versions of them, because they will still be the versions. We ourselves need to be into what we do. We like to go forward, we like to seek new territory and to continuously improve and learn and make the band grow. And sometimes people follow that evolution. Some people will dislike it, and that's something you just have to deal with. We see, though, that most people actually seem to appreciate that creative spirit that we show, also as a live band. And that's something that makes us want to continue with what we do."