Satyricon are one of those bands that love to stir the pot so to speak and musically while they started out as your traditional black metal band, have gone on to create some truly brilliant stuff in the latter part of their career. Admittedly they were never one of my favorites in the extreme metal circles, a band who upon first discovering them on the “Nemesis Divina” album back in 1996 failed miserably to impress me. In their defence, black metal simply wasn’t on my radar and still to this day I find it difficult to really branch out deep into the genre outside of a couple of bands who have the more black/thrash and groove tendencies in their music. But once Satyricon changed gears in the early 2000’s particularly with the fantastic “Now, Diabolical” album which I still spin regularly to this day, it was then that the band caught my full and undivided attention. Seeing them live at Soundwave Festival a few years ago only cemented my love of the new direction even further and while purists will argue they are no longer a black metal band, damned if I can’t help but really get into their far more interesting stuff these days.
Their latest album “Deep Calleth Upon Deep” is not only a continuation of their explorative and curious quest for expanding their musical horizons, it also stands as a new era in the band. Performing with the Norwegian National Opera in 2015 which was captured on DVD release amongst many things has somehow influenced or impacted their sound a little here. Granted Satyricon have recently incorporated a bit of that operatic sound anyway but it seems even more evident here that the cinematic landscapes of classical music has been interwoven through out the album and quite brilliantly I might add.
While there are a couple of traditional black metal moments here and there, the opening track “Midnight Serpent” and the starkingly cold “Black Wings and Withering Gloom” being prime examples, “Deep Calleth Upon Deep” is a fairly widespread album that contains the above mentioned operatic nuances complete with huge bellowing melodies and clean opera-like background vocals to boot. There are progressive elements as well like the stop-start groove of “Blood Cracks Open The Ground” and the groove stomper “Dissonant” but where it really shines is on the more out there tracks like “To Your Brethren In The Dark” where there’s a subtle swagger and looseness to it and “The Ghost Of Rome” where I can’t help but hear a lot of alt. rock vibes going on. Catchy as well which is not necessarily a core element in any extreme or black metal album but that’s what seperates Satyricon from the rest these days, it’s the hook and groove with that sense of rock n’ roll injected into the sound that almost harks back to early Venom but modernised in a way.
There’s a lot to be said about bands who develop a signature sound for a number of years before catching everyone off guard and giving a big finger to traditionalists who only like music one way. Satyricon left that idea behind and I say good riddance, “Deep Calleth Upon Deep” is a great album that captures everything right about what good music needs. The world may be all doom and gloom in the eyes of it’s citizens but that doesn’t mean the music has to suck because of it.
TRACKLIST
Midnight Serpent
Blood Cracks Open The Ground
To Your Brethren In The Dark
Deep Calleth Upon Deep
The Ghost Of Rome
Dissonant
Black Wings And Withering Gloom
Burial Rite
