WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: THE BEST OF THE REST OF SATYRICON’S SATYR ON 'THE AGE OF NERO'

When I asked Satyr, frontman for Norwegian black metallers Satyricon, what his favorite songs were on the band’s latest, The Age of Nero (Koch), he was noticeably hesitant. He considers the album an indivisible work of art. But after explaining the nature of the “Choice Cuts” interview I was conducting, he warmed up, and that portion of the Q&A is what we published in the latest issue of Revolver, on stands now. For the rest of the interview, Satyr (pictured below, front) was relaxed, good-natured and, somewhat surprising, very funny, even despite the fact we caught him on the band’s most strenuous tour to date. Turns out, as I learned below, if you want Satyr to open up, just offer him a Diet Coke.
—Associate Editor Kory Grow

REVOLVER You are in Poland right now on your European tour. How has it been going?
SATYR It’s been extremely good. I think November and December 2008 is probably the toughest competition I’ve ever seen in my 16 years of doing Satyricon in the touring market. Right now in Europe, we have the Unholy Alliance tour with Slayer, Trivium, Mastodon, and Amon Amarth. Slipknot is out with Machine Head and Children of Bodom. Morbid Angel is out there with, like, a seven-band bill with themselves as headliners. A German thrash-metal band, Destruction, is out on tour. The Norwegian band Enslaved is out on a headlining tour. And then Cradle of Filth and Gorgoroth are out on tour. And we’re all hitting the same cities if not on the same day, then the day before, the day after, the same week. Things like that. The fans only have so much money, so they have to make some choices.

Sounds tough. Has it been going well for you?
Out of all these tours, it’s by far Satyricon who has the most obscure billing. It’s basically just Satyricon as an established band and then we have a young band from Sweden on Century Media, which nobody really knows, meaning we have to do all the ticket sales ourselves. And despite all this, we seem to do much better than all the other acts that it’s natural for us to compare ourselves to, in terms of ticket sales from talking to promoters every day. We’re really happy. We have great attendance. And all the songs from The Age of Nero seems to go down with the old songs, if not even better. Things couldn’t be better for us right now. The only problem we’re facing right now is that we have to kill our agent when we get back home due to the total lack of off-days on this tour. [Laughs]

Has that been wearing on you?
Tomorrow, we’ve been out for a month, and so far we’ve had one travel day and one off day. At this stage of the tour, it doesn’t take much to piss one of us off. If there’s one thing missing from the rider, even if I don’t want it, I go to the tour manager and say, “Hey, what’s this?!” But it’s all right. You spend your whole day thinking, God, this sucks, but as soon as the show starts, I’m thinking it’s all good.

What’s something that was missing from your rider recently?
It’s mostly when it’s stupid stuff. If you say, “Oh, can we have some Diet Cokes like it says in the rider?” And they say, “Sure, no problem.” And then they come back with Coke. And I say, “I hate sodas with sugar in it. I don’t want anything with sugar in it.” And they’re like, “What’s the problem? How?” But it’s fine. We’re really having a great tour.

How do you make it worthwhile for you on the road?
We play every show as if it was the last show that we’re ever gonna play. It’s been awhile since we were thinking that one show isn’t as important as the next one. We’ve made some adjustments that have been quite interesting on this tour. Before we went out, I called the tour manager and I said, “Get rid of all the alcohol from the rider.” Satyricon has never been a band that’s had any drinking problems. Satyricon consists of real wine lovers. We really, really like wine. I even collect wine, myself. It’s just, with a schedule like this, anything that can get in the way of doing my job is something I want to get rid of. So our tour manager asked me, “What do you want instead of the alcohol?” I said, “Well, we’ve got shitloads of new wireless systems for the stage, so tell them to get batteries instead and get day passes to a local gym for everyone in the band.” We respect our fans enough to make sure that we’re as prepared as we can be to deliver.

It sounds like your fans are reciprocating.
Almost on a daily basis, I have fans coming up to me after the show, showing me their Satyricon tattoos. It’s like I said jokingly to [Satyricon drummer] Frost the other day, “What should we do? Give them money?” [Laughs] You think it’s cool, because it’s such an extreme sign of dedication, but at the same time you almost feel like you really owe them in a way when they decided to put this permanent thing on their body like a Satyricon logo or some of them with Norwegian flags or some even more extreme like they’ve tattooed a band photo.

You initially resisted talking about specific songs for our “Choice Cuts” feature. Why is that?
On The Age of Nero, there are eight songs. There isn’t a ninth, 10th, or 11th track. Those were the eight songs that we felt made one great musical journey lasting for 45 minutes or whatever it is. As much as I enjoy all the songs, I really like to listen to the album from beginning to end. In order for them to make sense, I have to listen to them as a part. You could say for example that a song like “Den Siste,” the final song on the album, is hard to listen to by itself for me. I have to see it as the completion; I have to listen to it from beginning to end. I like it better as a musical journey, not like an iPod journey, best of this, best of that.