SATYRICON: 'The Age Of Nero' First-Week Sales Revealed

"The Age Of Nero", the latest album from the Norwegian black metal band SATYRICON, sold around 1,700 copies in the United States in its first week of release, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The CD debuted at No. 18 on the Top New Artist Albums (Heatseekers) chart, which lists the best-selling albums by new and developing artists, defined as those who have never appeared in the Top 100 of The Billboard 200.

"The Age Of Nero" entered the German Media Control chart at position No. 73. It also landed on the national chart in the band's home country at position No. 5. This is SATYRICON's lowest chart entry in Norway since "Rebel Extravaganza", which premiered at No. 32 in 1999. "Volcano" (2002) entered the chart at No. 4, while 2006's "Now, Diabolical" came in at No. 2.

In a recent interview with Cameron Edney of Inside Out webzine, SATYRICON frontman Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven stated about the CD, "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."

Regarding the songwriting process for "The Age of Nero", Satyr said, "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."