Its hard to describe what it is, exactly. Argh! Ok, its fair to say I have never done any sort of Classical music review… ever. While this is a Satyricon album, and their name is on the tin. This is part of a larger project; a celebration of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, best known for his painting “The Scream”.

So, does anyone remember the Wongraven album Fjelltronen? Dungeon Synth, heavy on atmosphere? Maybe you’ve heard of Mortiis? Fenriz’s Storm and Isengard projects? Maybe I’m throwing out ambient Black Metal albums, grasping to categorize what Satyricon & Munch is within the realm of the Black Metal spirit.

On blackened chords it comes from the speakers, a single track, fifty-nine minutes long ebbing and flowing like a stygian river, boiling through the bowels of the earth. Guitars are present, and according to the press release, Satyr used a multitude of instruments to create the beautiful miasma.

The first half of the record is classical based, but not bouncy and jaunty, its Wagner tones that bring the darkness and it isn’t till the halfway mark that Frost shows up on a drum kit that the song takes on a frozen, desolate feeling. The journey down this river of black lava is almost over; it’s been a strange trip through the mind of Edvard Munch and Satyricon.

I recommend this, it’s a different kind of mood and atmosphere, unsettling at times. Boundaries of what Black Metal is are flattened and scattered across the soundscape universe. Satyricon has undertaken a huge project, a celebration of the man and his work, while also adding a diverse and stunning Black Classical (new genre, just made it up) album to an already classic discography.

I suppose this last reason is why Satyricon chose Satyricon for their eighth full length. The band has undergone several re-inventions in the past, but it’s been a long time since they’ve offered any real surprises, not at least since the black n’ roll attack of “Fuel for Hatred” on Volcano in 2002, or the grimy post-black metal of Rebel Extravaganza in 1999. So if Satyricon is affirming the Satyricon sound here, then it’s this: mid-paced, lumbering and atmospheric post-black metal, with blastbeats played at half-time and throat-scarred, gravelly vocals. It’s the same sound of Volcano and The Age of Nero and Now, Diabolical, but it’s been given a warmer and more weathered tone. More pensive and less savage, slower and more nuanced. And to these ears, a far cry from the band that once captured my imagination with alien Norse rage and mystery on albums like Dark Medieval Times, Nemesis Divina or my favorite, The Shadowthrone.

If you enjoyed the slower, more mysterious moments of those albums, then you’ll still enjoy doomy, wandering tracks on Satyricon like “The Infinity of Time and Space,” the dirge-like closer “Natt” or the psychedelic, 70s-inspired midsection of “Nocturnal Flare.” However, with the exception of two tracks – which I’ll get to in a bit – this is another slowed-down, dragged-out Satyricon album. “Trog Og Kraft” and “Ageless Northern Spirit“ lope along at the same bludgeoning pace, and while “Our World, It Rumbles Tonight” does just that, “Nekrohaven“ manages a bit more swagger (also, gang vocals). It’s the same experience as the last few albums. I dig the general sound – Satyr’s scraping vocals against pounding percussion and blunt, axe-wound guitar riffs – but the songs don’t offer near enough variety or excitement.

Yet then, in the middle of the album, two out-of-nowhere surprises. “Phoenix,” likely to be the most controversial cut on Satyricon, is also far and away the best thing here: a clean-crooned ballad closer to Nick Cave or Roy Orbison or The National than anything you’d expect from a long-time black metal act. Had Satyricon come out with an entire album like this, it would have furrowed eyebrows and deepened frowns all over the metal world. It might also have been brilliant.

And right afterwards, an explosion from the opposite end of the musical spectrum. “Walker on the Wind” is one of the fastest tracks this band has done in a decade, rippling with punk-black riffs and thundering drums. It too settles into a malevolent groove before long, but the slowdown is well-earned because of the contrast – and it’s that contrast that is missing from the rest of Satyricon. Had the album opened with this attack rather than the sludgy “Trog Og Kraft” (seriously, I defy you not to think of “When the Saints Come Marching In” when you hear that one), it might have worked as both reaffirmation and reintroduction.

As it is, Satyricon offers a few long-awaited and welcome new tricks – the warmer, psychedelic touches throughout and those startling, seductive clean vocals on “Phoenix” – but otherwise, it’s not quite the bold statement that we’ve been waiting for.

The eighth , self titled studio album by Norwegian black band SATYRICON will be released in North America on September 17th via Nuclear Blast Entertainment.

“We are back. Sorry it took so long, but we needed the time to be able pull off a record like this,” states band frontman Sigurd “Satyr” Wongraven. “Comparing this one to previous records is time wasted, it is SATYRICON; constantly on the move. Naming this record Satyricon was the most obvious thing in the world. We have never done a record which captures the spirit of this band in such a way. Ever. It will demand a lot from you as a listener, but I know you will love it. It will grow on you and that is why it will stay with you forever. We won’t tour as much in the future as we used to, and that will just make every tour more special. This album is for you and ourselves. It is our moment!”

Satyricon was recorded in Norway, produced by Sigurd “Satyr” Wongraven, and mixed by Adam Kasper. The album features a guest vocal appearance by fellow Norwegian Sivert Høyem of the rock group MADRUGADA. In-studio photos can be viewed on the band’s official Facebook page.

Satyricon will be released in North America the following formats:

· deluxe jewel case with three bonus tracks

· vinyl LP in assorted colors (release date TBA)

A pre-order bundle with an exclusive t-shirt + the deluxe CD is available on the Nuclear Blast USA Webshop.

Track listing for Satyricon is:

01 – Voice Of Shadows

02 – Tro Og Kraft

03 – Our World, It Rumbles Tonight

04 – Nocturnal Flare

05 – Phoenix

06 – Walker Upon The Wind

07 – Nekrohaven

08 – Ageless Northern Spirit

09 – The Infinity Of Time And Space

10 – Natt

Bonus Tracks:

11 – Phoenix (Recording Session Mix)

12 – Our World, It Rumbles Tonight (Deeper Low Mix)

13 – Natt (Wet Mix)

Too bad.

If you’ve heard those albums, you can pretty much predict what you’ll get here as well. Snarling vocals with short, clipped prose. Most songs are mid-tempo grinds built around a few simple, cycling riffs. Some are quite catchy for awhile (best one: “Black Crown on a Tombstone”). A few tracks slow to smoky, miserable dirges. Only one (“Die by My Hand”) manages a quick tempo at all. And yes, there’s a feral, unadorned purity to the sound – some call it black n’ roll but I don’t think it’s anything quite so cheeky.

However, after a few tracks, it always seems time to move on to something else. Or else you realize that the album has already finished playing while you got busy doing or thinking about something else.

The Age of Nero is a great title – if you know the old adage, you’d expect the maniacal soundtrack to a city’s fiery destruction. Instead, this is the sound of a city at a standstill. I hope Satyr and Frost find their inspiration again for the next one. It’s time for another reinvention.

This EP (released only on 7″ with a companion CD) seems like a forerunner to their unannounced new album. It’s still in line with the sound that Satyricon has been cultivating since Rebel Extravaganza (the title track is the only completely new song here), but there are hints that they may be ready to step out of their self-imposed minimalist box as well – although very slowly.

“My Skin is Cold” will be instantly familiar if you’ve heard the last few albums – simple riffs and Satyr’s raspy, venom-spit delivery. It bashes along, slightly above mid-tempo, and like many of the tracks on Now, Diabolical, it’s got a decent groove to it, although it’s nowhere near as arresting or malevolent as any of the band’s earlier works. It gives the feeling of a graying, battle-scarred wolf – too weary to prowl and fight as it once did, but it can still tear your throat out if you get too close.

“Live Through Me,” which was originally released as a bonus track off Volcano, oozes with more menace, especially when a theremin-like keyboard is brought in midway for an eerie call-and-response above the grinding riffs. Here, and also on the surprisingly bluesy/stoner-rock “Existential Fear-Questions”, we start hearing some more textural and atmospheric elements beginning to rise out of the murk. “Existential” also features two things I’ve never heard before in a Satyricon track: Hammond organs and guitar solos.

Satyricon is obviously coming late to the 70s psychedelic party – their countrymen Enslaved have been skillfully blending elements of that sound into their expansive post-black metal for going on ten years now. So none of this is fresh – but it is welcome. Dark Medieval Times and The Shadowthrone, with their folk interludes and misty Viking mystery, were illustrative, rich and hypnotic. So maybe just the presence of these elements suggests that the band is tiring of their stripped-down sound and is ready to start stretching out a bit more. And I can understand the need to do it slowly and carefully – you throw too many new elements into the mix and suddenly it becomes trimming and tinsel, rather than an integral part of the atmosphere.

The final two tracks on the album are live versions of “Repined Bastard Nation” and “Mother North,” both with orchestras added in. On the former, the symphonic elements are subtle – a horn blare here and there, that’s it. It’s neither as bombastic as Dimmu Borgir, nor as tacked-on and muddled and Metallica‘s S&M show with Michael Kamen (which I was at, meh), but feels more in line with the minimal flourishes and accents used in the other tracks presented here. “Mother North,” which has always been pompous in its own right, starts off with a blatt of horns and falls somewhere between the opening of “The Trial” from Pink Floyd‘s The Wall and a trollish high school marching band. As with the entire EP, it’s entertaining and worth a listen for longtime fans, but by no means essential.

I’ve now listened to Volcano through a few times and have to admit that they have rebounded dramatically. More rock, more traditional in the sense of cyclic patterns and catchy phrasing and less linear, less cumbersome. The songs are distinctive and Satyr’s vocals are very understandable. Satyricon can release an album better than half the mainstream metal world and not measure up to their past glories. Even so this is one of the better discs to come out over the last five years or so. The emphasis is on slow carefully measured music with ample flourishes, mostly from Frost, to add memorable texture. The electronics are more like the icing on the cake than the flour that allows it to be a cake as it used to be, but this disc would be vastly different without satyr’s electronics. “Black Lava” and “Repined Bastard Nation” are the two most distinctive songs, jumping directly into your brain’s permanent memory banks. “With Ravenous Hunger”, I built the pain inside you, with Frost’s feisty drumming and Satyr’s sneering guitar is a favorite. The doom metal like slow and ominous middle section, after “can’t you see the world’s on fire” is great, followed by more intensity as Satyr screams “you can’t stab me” and Frost adds “or even touch me.” A nice fast section sans vocals appears in “Angstridden”, with electronic flourishes and a cool riff just before Anja cuts in with her vocals. This is not my favorite song but it doesn’t hurt the integrity of the album.

While I enjoy this disc it does not replace their 94-96 catalog. I’m looking forward to this new Satryicon in the years to come, welcome back, even if I am the only one that thinks they ever slipped. They have had a solid career playing the music no one could understand.