SATYRICON's FROST Says His Band Is 'Always Going Through A Constant Evolution'

Drummer Kjetil-Vidar "Frost" Haraldstad of Norwegian black metallers SATYRICON spoke to Heavy New York about how he and his bandmates have progressed musical since the group's inception three decades ago. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The way I see it, SATYRICON is always going through a constant evolution. We have always emphasized the importance and the meaning of creativity and innovation and boldness and daring to try something new because we see black metal as a genre that was born through creativity. It was born through bands that dared to go where other bands hadn't been going before them. They took things further in many, many ways, made their music harder and rawer than anything that was really done before that, and they brought some darkness into this that you didn't really have before. There were some attempts perhaps, but before the very first black metal bands, you didn't really have it in that sense. And also many of these bands showed a great pioneering spirit and there was a lot of avant-garde work going on. And these elements were very, very important, and through SATYRICON we have always tried to cultivate these elements and really make it a part of our musical DNA to cultivate that creativity. And then that is your starting point. I think that the band will go through lots of changes, and sometimes the evolution will happen in a very, very significant way from album to album, other times perhaps at a slightly slower pace, but it will always be there."

He continued: "I think that a band like SATYRICON has always been really bound to seek new musical territory and to constantly renew ourselves, and it's also a natural part of our way of operating too, to seek new ways of working and to see whether we should try to bring in something that we have never had before and that we don't really even master, and see if it is a resource that we actually manage to bring into the band and make the whole thing grow."

In a unique collaboration with the world-famous Munch museum in Oslo, Norway, SATYRICON recently created a musical composition in album format, titled "Satyricon & Munch", which was made available last month on all digital platforms. The new music, created by SATYRICON frontman Sigurd "Satyr" Wongraven, is written in the shape of a so-called musical work, it is 56 minutes long and transcends any genre barriers. The critically acclaimed art exhibition of the same title is on display at the Munch museum in Oslo until August 28.

SATYRICON's latest regular collection of original material, "Deep Calleth Upon Deep", was released in September 2017 via Napalm Records. The disc was recorded in Oslo, Norway and Vancouver, Canada, during early 2017 and mixed together with revered studio guru Mike Fraser (who previously worked on SATYRICON's 2006 album, "Now, Diabolical").

SATYRICON's first two albums, 1993's "Dark Medieval Times" and 1994's "The Shadowthrone", were released as remixed and remastered reissues with altered cover artworks, in May 2021 via Napalm Records.

Photo credit: Morten Andersen