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

When we were talking about “Black Crow on a Tombstone,” you mention seeing just that scene from Thorns guitarist Snorre Ruch’s kitchen. So, uh, Snorre lives next to a cemetery?
Yeah, he does! It’s a kind of funny place, man—he doesn’t really have a living room, ’cause his living room is a studio. He’s got an apartment, and he’s got a bedroom and a kitchen, bathroom, and a studio, because he just built his living room into a home studio apartment with soundproofing and recording equipment. So sometimes when I want to get away from everything, I’ll just take some of my stuff on a disk and fly up north to Trondheim and spent the weekend at Snorre’s place and trade recording ideas. He’s good with those kinds of things, and I don’t really have the patience or the equipment, so it’s good to have Snorre. He’s a complete geek when it comes to stuff like that. He’s got a really different perspective; I’m a little more street-smart, but I like the musical training that Snorre has. We have complimentary skills that’ve let me help him out with his music in the past, and he’s made a really solid contribution to Satyricon in the last few years. He’s also been a catalyst between me and Frost.

How is that?
Despite the fact that the chemistry between me and Frost has always been good, with Snorre coming in from the outside, it makes a big difference. Imagine something I’d say again and again and again to Frost, and he disagrees—it doesn’t work anymore. I can still say it, but it has no effect. But if someone comes in from the outside and says something I’ve said for five years for the first time, Frost’ll go, “Uh huh!” And he’ll do things differently. I’ll say, “Hey, I’ve said this for five years,” and he’ll say, “Man, you never said that. Fuck you.” [Laughs] And it’s been the other way around, too. Snorre has let me see things more in Frost’s way, because he comes in from the outside and says Frost’s things in a way that’s easier for me to relate to. So we had a lot of fun making The Age of Nero, even though it’s dark as fuck, the darkest record we’ve ever made, we had a lot of fun, and I think that’s audible on the record as well.

How does The Age of Nero tie into Satyricon’s connective thread throughout all of your albums?
Musically, I think I’d join Frost in saying it’s the ultimate Satyricon album. As you can imagine, I’m extremely passionate about this album, and even more so Frost. The Age of Nero is everything we’ve learned through 16 years, perfected. It’s a powerful, authoritative, muscular album, yet it’s still extremely atmospheric. That, to me, is the first and foremost quality—its atmosphere. It’s a dynamical record, It’s got good variety, and to me it’s a real album, it’s not just a compilation of songs. And I think it’s gonna age well. A lot of people tell me it takes quite a few spins for them to get really into it, and I thought, “Aw, that’s good.” I have a number of people who’ve told me that they enjoy it, but it took them 20-plus spins to really get into it, to get all the subtleties and the nuances throughout the record, and I just feel that that’s a good sign.

What about thematically?
Nero wasn’t only the last emperor of greatest empire that’s ever existed, it’s also the Italian word for black. So it’s also a reference to the age that we live in, which is to me, clearly, the apocalyptic age, and it has really affected me as a songwriter, making my music in such a dark world. Armageddon doesn’t seem like a mythical thing in rock music off in the distance anymore, though it’s fascinated people in rock and music and religion throughout history. I guess most people never really believe that it’s coming. It just seemed like a really fascinating subject, but now…now, with war on just about every continent, escalating religious and cultural conflicts, and one natural disaster taking more human life than the last, and most importantly, little will to fight the downward spiral that we’re in, where all of this is heading. I’ve thought a lot about that.

I think even if everyone got together on the same page and decided that we have to stop this evolution or progression towards where we are heading—even if we all did that, it’d be really, really difficult because of the state of the earth, you know? But what makes it any worse is that I can’t see any real will to do it. Nonetheless, Satyricon isn’t a band of social commentary; we’re a band of spirituality. All I’m saying is, all of this has affected me as any artist, who writes a book, paints a painting, makes music. What you see gets processed and gets reflected in your thinking, and if you do art, it’ll be reflected in your art.