Satyricon

Satyricon
Date: 10/08/09
Place: Key Club, West Hollywood CA
Review By: ~ Aniruddh (Andrew) Bansal

We were treated to some good opening bands tonight. Chthonic, black metal band all the way from Taiwan thoroughly entertained the crowd. Its a pity that they got to play less than half an hour after having come out on this tour from the far east.

Their set list:

1. Rise Of The Shadows
2. Bloody Gaya Fulfilled
3. Spell of Setting Sun : Mirror Of Retribution
4. Forty-Nine Theurgy Chains

Toxic Holocaust were really impressive. It was a combination of black and thrash metal, and gave me quite a retro feel similar to how bands like Venom sounded. I will surely see them again whenever I get the chance. This band has a lot of promise.

Their set list:

1. Intro
2. March From Hell
3. Gravelord
4. Wild Dogs
5. In The Name Of Science
6. War Is Hell
7. 666
8. Endless Armageddon
9. Lord Of The Wasteland
10. Nuke The Cross

I didn't like the next band Bleeding Through all that much as I'm not a big fan of the metalcore-type vocals and guitar riffs. But its good that the front man acknowledged the fact that there are bound to be haters of their music in a mainly black metal crowd.

Satyricon hit the stage at 10.30 and it was a thrill to see Satyr in flesh and blood for the first time. In fact, it was the first time I was in a black metal show, and I honestly didn't know what to expect in terms of crowd behavior. I'm glad to say that everything about Satyricon's performance was focused on the music tonight. They opened with the song Repined Bastard Nation. For the first few songs Satyr was doing only vocal duty and he came off as an intimidating front man with a very, very strong personality and stage presence. He had the crowd almost at his mercy for the entire time they were on stage.

They followed the opening song with a new song Wolfpack. Their latest album Age Of Nero has definitely been a ground-breaking effort and it was nice to see them finally be able to headline a tour to play songs off of it. They played the title song from the Now, Diabolical album next. We were singing the chorus loud on this one! Then Satyr asked us if we had heard of an album called Nemesis Divina, for which we roared in approval. They played the song Forhekset from that album.

Then came my favorite song off of the new album, and probably the crowd's favorite too, Black Crow On A Tombstone. We were loving every minute of this. Forget about what the genre means, this was a fine performance by a bunch of really talented and intelligent musicians. Another song from Now Diabolical named A New Enemy followed this one. They continued with two more amazing new songs Die By My Hand and Den Siste. Before singing Den Siste Satyr even asked the crowd if they had permission to sing in Norwegian. This was another one of those very few occasions where the new songs were sounded even better in a live performance and getting a better reaction than the older, more familiar songs. They closed the main set with The Pentagram Burns and went in among loud shouts of 'Satyricon! Satyricon!'

They came back for the encore and their keyboard player stepped to near the edge of the stage and got the crowd to clap and shout along to start off the first song K.I.N.G. We all followed with her prompts.The band went back to the Volcano album and brought out the song Fuel For Hatred for us. They went in again but we knew they aren't done yet, because the house lights remained switched off. And sure they did come back out for the final song Mother North after which they said thanks and a final goodbye, with a promise of coming back to LA soon.

I was mightily impressed by these guys. I've already mentioned a lot of praise for Satyr, and Frost was brutal on those drums. I had the pleasure of interviewing him before the show. Judging from that, he is a really serious, thoughtful and smart guy. It showed that the band is quite serious and meticulous about their music and they don't believe in the whole 'true black metal' gimmick. They definitely concentrate on the right areas and the result shows in their studio albums and in their performance. The other musicians on the stage did their job perfectly well and complimented the two main men with great aplomb and grace.

I would say we should stop classifying and delimiting music into genres and just enjoy the efforts of such talented and sincere musicians like those in Satyricon. Kudos!

Here's their complete set list:

1. Repined Bastard Nation
2. The Wolfpack
3. Now, Diabolical
4. Forhekset
5. Black Crow On A Tombstone
6. A New Enemy
7. Die By My Hand
8. Den Siste
9. The Pentagram Burns

Encore
10. K.I.N.G
11. Fuel For Hatred
12. Mother North