Satyricon are arguably one of the most commercially successful band to emerge from the 90’s Norwegian black metal scene. Pushing the fringes of the genre as they went, they’re now about to release a unique DVD Live at the Opera (Napalm Records), of a performance in the Oslo opera house with the Norwegian National Opera Choir. Susanne Maathuis caught up with Frost, the enigmatic drummer of the band, for Ghost Cult after their show in Nijmegen, the first of their short European tour supporting the DVD.
Being that tonight was the first concert of a new tour, we started the conversation with the evenings’ performance:
“We were a bit late so we didn’t actually have a sound check, but we try not to let the crowd notice that. We had a good start, we met a crowd that enjoyed having us here and enjoyed the show that we delivered. It’s good to have the feeling of good contact between crowd and band, that is basically the reason why we’re here. We’re not actually here to entertain ourselves, but to create moments of magic with out audience. This is a good start.”
Touring to support the soon to be released DVD Live at the Opera, with the Norwegian National Opera Choir, we asked about that performance and if it satisfied expectations:
“Absolutely, and we knew it was going to be special when we came up with that idea in the first place. We had gotten to perform one song with the choir at a closed event, ‘To the Mountains’, and we felt afterwards we really just had to do a full show in that setting; The Choir and Satyricon in the Opera house. It turned out that the choir really wanted to do it as well, because they had a blast when we performed together. I think that their enthusiasm was almost as great as ours. And since they were up for it and the choirmaster was up for it, the management at the opera house wanted to make it happen. Everything that needed to be set to make it happen was set and we could make it a proper plan and then realize the plan again and actually getting to the point where it was becoming a show. All the way we were certain that it was going to be an absolutely outstanding experience for us all; for the band, for the choir, for the audience at the Opera house that day. And that’s how it was really. Given the experience we had with that one song, we understood that this couldn’t be wrong. The band could handle the setting, we were absolutely sure about it. We knew that the choir would deliver. The man writing the arrangements for the choir, which would be the same man on this full show project, he understood Satyricon. You need the composer to understand what to achieve. Basically he needed to understand Satyricon’s music, which he did. The choirmaster helped to do it, because his task was to make the choir sing along to Satyricon’s music in a way that Satyricon could perform in the usual way, without really adapting, changing, removing or adding anything. He managed this flawlessly and that shows his skills and his very professional attitude and ability.”
Satyricon, by Susanne A. Maathuis Photography
Will you do more of these special shows, one off concerts? Do you have any ideas or was this just a one time thing?
“Who knows, Satyricon is a band that enjoys doing that sort of thing. I think we’re really fit for taking upon us slightly unconventional tasks, be it this or something else. Perhaps we would do something with the choir again, but in a very different way. All I can say is there have been talks about such things. Whether or not it can be done for practical reasons, we don’t know yet, but I think there is a mutual wish to do something again in those lines.”
“But there could be other things, I mean this tour is an example of us doing something slightly different. We’re jamming a little on stage. Today we played like three pieces that aren’t even finished yet. We have just toyed around a little with this in the rehearsal place and we have started the sense that there is something there that will probably end up as songs on the next album. It’s still too early really say and it could end up being very different from what the audience heard today. It’s still a little fun to do it and it’s a slightly 70s way to do it. The old hard rock bands, they played material in an unfinished form, basically rehearsing it in a live setting, a lot before actually recording it on albums. Many of the great hard rock songs were jams to begin with, that didn’t really have a proper structure. It just came into being as the band jammed on the basic ideas, and they did it live.”
Satyricon, by Susanne A. Maathuis Photography
Satyricon’s Live At The Opera DVD will be released May 1st through Napalm Records, and is available for pre-order in their web-shop.
WORDS AND CONCERT PHOTOS BY SUSANNE MAATHUIS