Satyricon

Saturday June 21 (Hellfest 2008 2nd day)

For today's third interview, we have the chance to chat a little with the legendary drummer Frost (1349 & Satyricon) some times after Satyricon's performance. The band will release its seventh album later this year on Roadrunner (November 3rd).

Fab : Concerning your show today, are you happy with your performance ?
Frost: Yeah, kind of. I think the crowd was giving us a lot of energy. We were very tired, we've played in Finland yesterday, we travelled like, for 4 hours from where we played into the airport in Turku (Finnish Airport). Then we travelled from Turku to Copenhagen, then Copenhagen to Paris, and from Paris to Nantes, and in car from the airport to here. So, we've been on the road since, two shows in a row, no proper sleep, so…

Fab: And you'll stay here for tomorrow?
Frost: I will actually stay here on day. Now that I'm here, I'm gonna see a couple of bands.

Fab: Which bands in particular?
Frost: I've planned to see MINISTRY later today, and MORBID ANGEL tomorrow. And I will have some sleep tonight (laughs)

Fab: Yesterday I interviewed Daniel from KATATONIA, and he was full of praises concerning SATYRICON, so what do you think about it?
Frost: KATATONIA belong to a distant past for my part. Later KATATONIA really have turned, become a music I believe they're playing these days isn't really my cup of tea. So it'd be wrong for me to comment.

Fab: In 2000, I was in Lyon where you were opening for PANTERA
Frost, cutting: (Laughter) Yes, you was there?

Fab : Yeah, it was a great show. Do you have a special memories about it? Even if it's already 8 years ago.
Frost: I got to go deep down in my memory, now i'm kind of tired so it's difficult. I remember most of the tour, but to pick up a single show, it'd be difficult. I remember how the venue was like, but…We made like 35 shows on the tour so...

Fab: What's gonna be the orientations of the new album? If there's any…
Frost: I think it's a very huge album, we add a lot of size to it. It's my feeling that it's by far our best album, our most complete effort to date. We put everything that has been gathered up in sessions after all these years that we've been working as a band, and just poured it into this process of creating. Better, bigger and darker, more focused than anything else that we've done. There are groovier songs, there are faster songs…I think there's just so much energy entangled and so much of the dark latin spirit. It's no longer interesting to categorize the music, faster or slower or…more modern or "Old School"or whatever…because all these different elements are basically there, and there's no particularly direction. It's just concentrating in writing good songs, you know, our starting point is our passion for music, that why we've been playing. And our musical taste, somehow, reflects in the music.

Fab: For you, it's the most complete album?
Frost: There's a strong sense of totality to it. We're extremely satisfied with how it has turned out so far, and we have a very good feeling about production. So this is gonna be something huge this time.

Fab: So this album will be on Roadrunner?
Frost: Yes We're on Roadrunner internationally.

Fab: Concerning your live performances, do you prefer playing like today in front of big crowd, or rather little venue?
Frost: They are very differents things I can tell you. What I like about club shows is that we dictate the circumstances ourselves, we can have basically as long a soundcheck as we want, so we can fine tune, we can make everything in the proper place. We can prepare well, and make the band really shine musically and technically, and you don't have the opportunity to do that when you in festivals like today, we came here 50 minutes before we were entering the stage. There's a lot of preparation that we need, there's make-ups, there's…it's also a mental thing that you have to really, work a little with, canalyzing your current inner strength in order to be 100% an artist playing on the stage, cos' everything's about the music. So that's difficult, and the technical side, horrible, no time to even configure…

Fab: To warm up?
Frost: Yeah, I guess you do understand what I mean because of our huge drumkit, I have to exercise... Usually, our music demands some preparation, and everything feel so half way in festivals, but on the other hand, sometimes it feels like it's worth it, like today for instance. Ok, so the technical things aren't really on our side, everything feel typical, we're tired from all the travelling, (we're) stressed out from being late, being afraid of, you know, luggage missing all along, but as far as today makes it worthwhile. Sometimes it feels good to doing these festivals, that we can just sacrifice basically anything. It could be a bad drumkit, a bad sound, it's still feels good.

Fab: I can tell you that a lot of people were waiting for you.
Frost: This is a challenge for us to really play in front of large crowds and to present dark music to new people, you know, we need fresh blood among our fans as well. So it's kind of necessary, sometimes a really good experience, but basically I would say I'd prefer doing club shows.

Fab: In addition to that, is it not difficult to choose the set-list?
Frost: Yeah, this is a part of the circumstances that I talked about. You don't control anything. We just have to get on the stage, and do our shit. And people tell us that we have to get off after, you know, something I feel far too short.

Fab: It' s also an opportunity for the people who don't know you to see you.
Frost: That's our approach as well, ok, shows aren't that long but for us, to raise some interest for some people to come see us on our shows later, to check us out in full splendour.

Fab: What do you think about the return of "Old School" bands like HELLOWEEN, TESTAMENT, SUICIDAL TENDENCIES…?
Frost: Oh I think the old bands keep coming up all the time, and they have been doing this for, I don't know how long, 5 years? 10 years? And a lot of bands from the 80's and even the 90's that had quit, are reformed. I have strong feeling that, in more than 90% of the cases, these reforming are not musically or artistically motivated. I feel they have serious motives so to speak. That's obvious.

I think VENOM for instance sounds excellent today on stage (ndlr: yesterday), I'm not interested in the later albums but that they perform the classics songs, that sounds like 84 as they did on the album, so that's cool, I think that their motivations it's because they manage so well to grasp that core feeling of what they were about. But for most other bands, from the old days, that have a break, there's a line on continuation…they don't really interest me that much.