Satyricon Just Surprise-Dropped a New Album About Edvard Munch
Y’all aware of the work of acclaimed Norwegian painter Edvard Munch? You most likely know his most famous painting “The Scream,” though you might also know his painting “Love and Pain (Vampire).” He also plowed every dissatisfied businessman’s wife that he could get his hands on, if you take a look at his history. Well, anyway, Norse black metal savants Satyricon appear to be fans, considering that they wrote an entire album to accompany a museum exhibit on him — and have surprise-dropped the record today.
The album is titled, unsurprisingly, Satyricon & Munch, and is a single 56-minute-and-change track. And while it’s more ambient and creepy than perhaps the average Satyricon fan is ready for, frontman Satyr explains that that’s the idea:
“In the musical work Satyricon & Munch, you will find my musical response to the emotions that the works of Edvard Munch instilled in me when working on the art exhibition. One could therefore say that the album release is not only a consequence of the making of an exhibition, but also a reflection of my studies of Edvard Munch’s life and philosophy on the making of art – and my eagerness to push myself as an artist. I deeply appreciate his emphasis on feeling over technique, his will to experiment and his determination to walk his own way. Of course these are also core values to Satyricon, which in this particular case becomes even more important.
To make this into what it is, it became clear early on that we needed to reverse the roles in the instrumentation: What has been complimentary in the past must now perhaps take more of a lead role, what is given in a regular song is perhaps not needed at all for this project. These types of reflections. To create the layers of emotion and atmospheres that we aspired to, the instrumentation needed to be rich in diversity. That is why we have a wide range of old school analog synthesizers, electric guitar, baritone guitar, bass guitar, drums, theremin, cello, viola, bass clarinet, contrabass clarinet, jouhikko, Hardanger fiddle, grand piano to name some. Some of these instruments are particularly receptive to the personal input of the musician and very suitable for creating the depth of layers that was necessary for this project. It has been important to us to break away from formatted approaches and focus strictly on what this project needs.
Black metal’s true nature is being limitless and while the format is unlike anything you’ve heard from Satyricon before, the tonality and personal signature is highly recognizable to those who know their Satyricon. We encourage everyone to refrain from trying to label the music and just accept that there is no need to. It is certainly not film music, it is not ambient and it is not something you have to make up a word for. It is Satyricon.”
Stream the album below. Meanwhile, physical copies of Satyricon & Munch are currently available for preorder.
