Satan, reformation

[jerome83]

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Album commandé

[guardianofsteel]

Et de deux

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/04 ... testimony/

[Thrashos]

Raaaaaaaaah hâte d'avoir ce putain d'album!!

[Mr. Gig]

Quelques mots en vidéo à propos de "Life Sentence" :



Deux entretiens avec Steve Ramsey (six-cordes), ici :

SATAN: Back to the beginning



I really admire Steve Ramsey, I love his work in Satan as well as Pariah and Skyclad, and was really happy to finally get a chance to speak to him. The main reason is the release of the band’s comeback album “Life Sentence” of course, but I also got a chance to cover a few other aspects. So Steve, the first preview of the new album is out today. Have you gotten any interesting feedback yet?

- We seen a few reviews of the new album. They’ve all been fantastic. I received one yesterday from English Metal Hammer. It looks really positive.

Metal Hammer? So they’re covering traditional metal again?
- Yeah, they’re doing a big feature about the history of the band. We get a lot more press on the new album than we got in the eighties.

I have to say I absolutely love the album myself. In your opinion, what’s the most important thing you have done right?
- We had a few little rules when we sat down. We’re obviously a lot more experienced musicians now than back then on the first album. We didn’t wanna make an album that sounded modern, or was influenced by the last 30 years. We wanted to make something we think we might have created if we stayed together for that second album.

I was a little surprised to discover you had signed for Listenable Records, as I believe there must have been interest from other parties as well?
- To be honest, it was mainly because there wasn’t a great deal of interest. Haha! We would have liked it to be more, but obviously nobody had heard the material we were gonna do. We sent a demo to Listenable Records, and the guy that runs the company is a big fan. We met him at a show in Belgium last year. He was so positive, and everything he said was like almost having another member in the band. Everything he’s done has been perfect as well. It was his idea to use Eliran Kantor for the artwork. We said “Isn’t this guy very expensive?” He told us not to worry about it. He’s really worked hard in making everything perfect for us. So far we got no complaints at all. I know it’s a small label, but sometimes it’ better to be on a small label than to be forgotten about as soon as the label puts out another release.

While I was doing some research for this interview, I read parts of the massive feature in Snakepit some years ago, where Russ Tippins spoke about the one off gig you did back in 2004. He was asked about the possibility of Satan releasing an album back then, but said he thought it would be difficult for Satan to find a label willing to release the album, so at least the situation is a bit better now?
- Yeah. There were a few small labels which showed interest. The bigger labels all turned us down. We sent a demo to Nuclear Blast, and kind of hoped they would be interested as they had just signed Hell. We had a representative from Nuclear Blast who came down to the show in Germany (I guess this must have been Keep It True), and he was going crazy, telling us he wanted to sign us. But apparently the boss said “no more old bands”. We also had a guy from SPV telling us he wanted to sign us, but we didn’t get anything back from them when we sent the demo.

Which songs did you put on this demo that was shopped around?
- I think it was “Time To Die”, “Twenty-Twenty Five”, because those were the first two we wrote for the album. The others? Hmm…”Testimony” and “Cenotaph”. Those four, it must have been those four.

What kind of discussions did you have when you outlined the musical direction for “Life Sentence”?
- It had to sound like it was gonna be the second album. We said: If we start writing songs and it doesn’t sound like that, we’re not gonna release it. We wrote under no pressure, remember we didn’t have a record deal that said we had to make an album. The album was finished before we signed the deal. Normally bands are under pressure to do things. If we didn’t like the finished package, that we created, it would never had been released. About half way through, we realized that it was going to work out.

So you paid for the recording out of your own pockets then?
- Yeah, in a way. We paid for it ourselves, but as soon as we got the advance, it paid for the studio time we already had spent and then the mix of the album.

Steve says it was drummer Sean Taylors idea to use the studio in Newcastle.
- It’s actually the place where we rehearsed. It’s a tiny, little studio above the rehearsal room. The engineer there is great, and Sean knew the guy and said let’ give it a go. We thought that even if we end up only recording a couple of songs, we can use them as a demo. We were so happy with what he did, so ended up doing the whole album. The album wasn’t recorded as one whole thing, it was recorded in parts. We did different drum session, and went in one by one and put our parts done. It was done piece by piece.

The engineer you worked with, did he have an extensive knowledge of Satan (the band that is) from before?
- None at all. Haha! He’s just a guy that works in a little studio, you know.

So did you force him to listen to “Court In The Act” then?
- I presume he would have given that one a listen. The thing is, in the past, especially in the eighties when we used new studios, people tried to push their idea of how they thought we should on us. This guy however, said: “How do you want your guitars to sound?” “Like they sound when I listen to them”, I replied. That’s the problem we had in the past. Things didn’t sound the way Satan sounds. I think this was captured on this album. He’s recorded it all dry, didn’t put any special effect on it or anything, the album has come out the way we sound when we rehearse as a band. The recording was then sent over to Italy, to Dario Mollo, who produced the last two Skyclad-albums. He basically polished it up.

Were you never tempted to implement something modern?
- No! Haha! We know “Caught In The Act” established us and is considered a groundbreaking album, but nobody can say they like the production on it. It’s not good. We were very disappointed with the production when we made the album. The main thing when we recorded the new album, is that it sounded to us like we think the band sounds. Nothing too produced, nothing that doesn’t sound like us. I think that’s what we achieved. When we play live, it’s got some extra energy about it, but I think the album sounds like us?

Was it the invitation to perform at Keep It True in 2011 that got the ball rolling again for you?
- Yeah! What happened was, when we got back together to the Wacken Show, but Sean wasn’t able to contribute, since he had a problem with his knee and couldn’t do the material. So we ended up using Phil Brewis, the guy that was in Blitzkrieg with Brian. We agreed to do Keep It True the year after, but Graeme was injured while on tour with Skyclad. He had a fall and split his head open, and we had to cancel the KIT-show that we had booked. Since that day, Oliver Weinsheimer just hassled me. Haha! He kept calling me and met me at Skyclad-shows saying: #Please, please do Satan. Do it for yourselves and the fans. There is a big following for Satan and a big interest in Europe now”. We weren’t aware of anything like that happening, but he just kept asking and insisting, and finally I spoke to Russ and asked what he thought of it. Russ then told me that Sean thought he might be able to play. Before we committed to the show, we went down and had a little run through of the songs, like a rehearsal. It sounded fine with Sean. That was the reason why we did it, had Sean still been unable to play, then it wouldn’t have happened.

I was really amazed by your performance at KIT, especially the guitar work was killer. What do you remember about that night?
- The main thing I remember about the whole show, was we had to do a signing session before the concert. It was like a half hour slot to sing some CDs or whatever. It took over an hour. It was so many people, young people wanting a signature. It was suprising for us, we expected a lot of guys at our age, in the forties. When we were on stage it was like being back in a time warp, because the crowd was enjoying it and knew every word. So yeah, that show really was the catalyst, there was no mention of us doing a recording or writing any material until after that festival.

The interaction and chemistry between you and Russ seems very special. Where does it come from?
- Russ and I formed the band when we were 15 years old and still at school. The way it happened is very strange. Russ got a guitar, and we were this little group of friends at school that liked heavy metal. We used to go to concerts, Judas Priest, Scorpions and Black Sabbath. Russ got a guitar, he’s had it for three or four months, and I was over with a couple of friends to see the guitar and hear him play. I think he did something by Motörhead and Ramones, some old punk stuff, just easy stuff. As soon as I heard him play, I said: We’re gonna form a band. I didn’t have an instrument, neither did any of the other guys. We found out who’s gonna be in the band, then we went out and bought instruments. Before I had the instrument, I had come up with the name of the band and the logo. Me and Russ have this chemistry, because we basically learned to play together. We never had any lessons on the guitar, we just sat down with our record collections and listened and learnt that way. I think that camaraderie has been there right from when we were 15 years old. Since then, we’ve always been friends, it was a bit different when Pariah split up in 1990, then I started working with Skyclad. Musically we didn’t do anything together, but we were still good friends and hang around with each other. In the end it was really great to get back on stage together.

Steve is in no doubt that Russ is by far the most talented guy he’s worked with.
- He is one of my favourite guitarist ever. If you asked me about my top five guitarist, he’d be one of them. He is a really creative musician, I love working with him. In Skyclad I am like the leader of the band and write most of the material. I love being in Satan and Pariah where it’s not totally my responsibility, where I have someone else to feed from. Some of the songs on the album are written together, and sometimes I get a little precious about music I write. Any piece of music, and riff or idea I give to Russ, I know he’s gonna create something fantastic out of it. He loves working with me for the same reasons. We feed from each other, and to do this album together has been great.

When did you decide to do a new album, after Keep It True in 2011?
- We played Keep It True and had a couple of other shows, we played in London. Russ then came up with a song, the first song we wrote is the first song on the album, “Time To Die”. “What do you think”, he said. It didn’t have any lyrics, then. “Do you think this is good?” “ Yeah, it sounds like a song we might have written back then”, I said. We then rehearsed that one and played it a couple of shows, at the festival we did in Germany (Metal Assault) and the London show the year after. It went down okay, so we thought we had done the right thing.

The fact that both the title as well as the artwork bear strong references to the milestone “Court In The Act”, could be brushed off as marketing strategy, especially by those who haven’t heard the album.
- It was so important…For thhe second album we did for Satan, “Suspended Sentence”, we used the same artist. We still used the judge, the judge was always be part of it, the judge and the the devil. That’s the basic theme of the whole band, you know. Satan isn’t occult or anything like that, the whole idea of the band is injustice. It’s all about injustice. It couldn’t really be anything else, it had to be the judge.

But by tying the new album so closely to the classic, you risked failing big time, if you didn’t come up with the goods?
- Haha, the album was finished before we did the artwork, so we kind of knew that we’ve already come up with the goods.

Steve still agrees that as a band, you need a bit of confidence to go all the way with it.
- Yeah, I think the strange thing was that none of us was under any pressure to produce anything. That helped so much in the making of the album and everything. Everyone were relaxed about it, it wasn’t like what if that doesn’t work, what if that doesn’t look good and what if people think this? We don’t care. We re not trying to make money, or to forge a career. It was purely for the fun of doing this, you know.

Is it satisfying for you as a musician to go back and do the stuff you were doing in the eighties?
- Absolutely! It’s fantastic, and we’re so stoked to go and performing the songs. The Satan-shows we’ve done so far, have all been about one album, the one we did with Brian, and then we added a couple of songs from the demos from before the album. Now we’re able to add some new songs to the set.

Did you sit down and listen to “Court In The Act” extensively before you made this album, or is that one in your blood forever?
- We had to sit down and listen a lot to it to be able to do the shows, so it was already back in our blood. I remember the first rehearsal that we had with Sean back in the band. The band was great with Phil Brewis behind the drums, I thought he did a good job, but it wasn’t the same vibe as we had in the early days. I can remember all the faces immediately after we finished the first song. We got this thing going between us all, and it’s still there. The any way this reunion would happen is if it was back to the beginning. Not any change. One of my favourite bands is Black Sabbath, and I am so disappointed that they’re back together without Bill Ward on the drums. Apparently it’s about financials, which is unbelievable. Like any of them need any money! I was so looking forward to hear what they could do together again, but now I don’t know. Every member of a good band is equally important.

Have you registered the rise in interest for NWOBHM-related acts the last few years?
- Not really. We didn’t see it happening, although I saw a little bit of it by being in Skyclad. We don’t follow the new bands. I just did an interview with a guy from Decibel Magazine, and he asked me about the bands that are playing the Live Evil-festival we’re doing this year. I told him that I hadn’t heard any of them. I haven’t got a clue, but I will go and listen to them, since we’re performing with them. The two bands that supported us at the London-show were great. It was so refreshing to be able to enjoy the support bands. Because, there’s been so many times, especially in the nineties, when I couldn’t. I am not a big fan of grunting and the really hard stuff, and it seemed like every band was doing that back then. Death metal and stuff is not my thing. I like to hear some melody. It’s really refreshing that young musicians and young fans have gone back to that.

Even though you might not have heard of them, you can be pretty sure that all the bands performing at Live Evil have heard of Satan.
- Yeah, that’s good.

We won’t go into the story about the band name, here, but if you had a new band today, and call it Satan, it would be perfect. Every new heavy metal-band would kill for that name.
- It’s strange you know, cause that’s what we thought at the time, when we choose the name. My favourite band was Black Sabbath, and nobody thought about them being occultist and writing songs about burning churches down. But for us it seemed to coincide with the change in directions of bands and the themes of bands and we happened to be called Satan when everyone were doing that kind of stuff. I didn’t want to be part of that and that’s why the shit happening in the eighties with us changing the name and stuff like that.

According to Steve all the songs on “Life Sentence” are brand new and not based on ideas from back then.
- Also there was no spares, no scrap, no outtakes. Every note that we’ve written, that’s the album. There was no songs written that were not good enough. We’re good at knowing what is good and what is bad before we start, so we didn’t waste our time writing songs we didn’t think were good enough.

We’ve already covered your close relationship with Russ, and of course you’ve been playing with Graeme iEnglish n Skyclad, but what kind of relationship have you had with the other guys of the band for the past 15 years?
- Occasionally I would see Brian, we never lost our friendship. I also saw Sean at different gigs, we didn’t really hang out together, but saw each other alone now and then and cared about what each other were doing. Sean also lived in America for a long time in the nineties, so he was away for few years. It was easy coming back together again.

When you get older, time is often precious. What have you forsaken to do Satan as much as you do right now?
– Just like the rest of my life. Haha! We have normal jobs you know, and didn’t expect anything like this, to do so many interviews. I think we do more press now than we did on the first album, that’s for sure. We do the same amount of press I was used to in Skyclad. It’s a lot of interviews and a lot of stuff going on all the time.

Steve works full time as a music teacher. He teaches guitar, but does a lot of other things as well, helps bands and also does samba drumming!
- It’s great to be able to do this as a job. Graeme and myself made a living out of Skyclad for a long time, then Martin basically left the band because the finances weren’t there anymore. We wanted to keep Skyclad going, so went out and got ourselves jobs.

Do you still have fun doing Skyclad?
– Yeah, it’s great. We’ve already written a new album. All the music is ready to go, we’ve rehearsed most of it, but I am not sure when it’s gonna be recorded cause Kevin (Ridley, vocals) is getting married this year.

But the profile of the band is clearly a bit lower now than when Martin sung in the band?
- We knew that would happen, but we didn’t want to let it go, because we enjoyed it so much. We really enjoyed the two last albums we did with Kev, especially the last one. We were so proud of that one. It’s not about how money we will make or how popular we are, and it’s about doing what we love doing. It’s exactly the same with Satan.

You’ve had a long and rich career. What would you name as the highlight?
- There are so many. Making the first album of course, and I still remember the first shows we played in the Dynamo Club in Holland. It’s unforgettable, cause it’s like the start of your career. There are so many highlights throughout the eighties, but with Skyclad we did some really big shows. A lot of that is still in my mind. People sometimes ask me if something really special has happened, and I remember one show, it must have been on the “Prince Of The Poverty Line”-tour. We played Marquee in London. It was sold out, 800 people and absolutely packed. A guy came in a wheel chair, and was placed in front of the stage. He was getting pushed by the fans, and we gestured for the fans to pick him up. It was total mayhem, with people stagediving off the top of the PA’s and stuff like that. And while all this was happening, some fans picked him up and threw him on the stage. He couldn’t walk, so he was lying on the stage, then they threw his chair up and we put him in his chair, and he spent the whole gig in his chair on the stage while we were running around him headbanging in his face. It was just crazy. Remember, this was at the time when people was burning churches down and stuff, which is bullshit to me. These people liked each other and loved the music, it was a happy heavy metal crowd. To have that kind of fans, was great.

Et là :

That Satan were one of the most slept-on bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal because of their name is a cruel irony. For a genre that adopted the devil as chief muse and aesthetic patriarch, Satan should have fitted right in; acceptance should have been instant. But while Satan, too, were a product of Venom’s hometown, Newcastle, England, their approach was wholly different.

Formed in 1979 when guitarists Steve Ramsey (also of seminal UK folk metal band Skyclad) and Russ Tippins were still at school, Satan were all about incorporating melody and technicality into NWOBHM’s innate speed. History, politics and justice trumped the for-the-album Satanism of their Geordie peers and the scene at large.

Satan were named after Satan but they were never in league with him. Ramsey and Tippins guitars were the rapier not the hammer; shit, they could really play. But many couldn’t get over a band called Satan coming out with a debut LP Court in the Act that showcased highfalutin’ musicality while paying no genre union dues in its lyrical themes. Calling the band Satan while singing about justice, Native Americans a la Maiden on “Broken Treaties”, Vikings on “Blades of Steal” (a la Maiden again), running from the law (a la . . . There are plenty of artistic parallels with Maiden) . . . That was all taken for cognitive dissonance by a music press that lumped them in with the then nascent extreme metal scene.

Satan were never that: they were straight-up, Heavy Metal, progressively cavalier, and that, as Steve Ramsey tells the Deciblog, helped screw everything up. Satan changed their name (Blind Fury [see bottom], Pariah, The Kindred), changed their line-up, lost momentum, and eventually succumbed to obscurity.

But Ramsey is not bitter. With the imminent release of Life Sentence (Satan’s first studio album since 1987’s Suspended Sentence), and a headlining appearance at Live Evil Festival confirmed for October, he has way more to look forward to than to regret.

What made you bring Satan back in 2004 and then again seven years later?
Steve Ramsey: What happened in 2004 was, we got offered to play the Wacken festival and thought it was a good idea but at the time. Sean [Taylor], our drummer, he had a problem with his knee; he had an operation and couldn’t play so we ended up with the drummer out of Brian’s Blitzkrieg band [Phil Brewis], and he did the show. We did it as a one-off, and didn’t intend to do any more—although we had agreed to do Keep It True Festival as a final show because the guy hassled us so much to do it we just said “yes”. We had no intention of doing any recording or anything like that. Then the Keep It True Festival was cancelled when Graeme [English, bass] had an accident when we were on tour with Skyclad, and split his head open. So, we had to cancel the Keep It True Festival, which was kind of tacked on the end of the Skyclad tour. From that moment on, the guy from Keep It True, Oliver Weinsheimer, kept on hassling us, and hassling us, and hassling us . . . Haha! He just wouldn’t let it go. Every time we went to Germany to play with Skyclad he would turn up at the show and start hassling me again. He was so adamant that there was a big following building up for the old stuff again, and we didn’t see that; but he is there in the scene, especially in Germany. Eventually, he persuaded us to do it but the only reason it happened was because Sean said he was capable of playing again. So we thought, “Great, let’s do the show, ‘cos we sort of owe this guy the show; we’ll do it with the original line-up and draw a line under it there.” That’s how that came about.

It’s funny, because where the metal underground is at, Satan have never been more relevant, or in demand. Are you out of the loop with regards to the metal scene?
Steve Ramsey: Very much so. I think we are just totally out of the loop. We’re not the same as we were when we were young kids, following new bands and stuff like that, so we had no idea that this style was becoming popular again, just no idea at all, and we got such a shock when we did Keep It True. The reaction of the crowd . . . We did a signing session before the show and it took an hour and a half, it was almost like we’d did it for the whole hall; every person had a Satan shirt, or a Satan album to sign. It was unbelievable.

How did Live Evil convince you to play; had you heard any of the other bands who were going to be on the bill?
Steve Ramsey: Again it was just Marek just hassling us! Haha, we’re so laid-back about all this, because we’re not like a young band who’s trying to make a name for themselves. It’s like, “Well, okay: go on, we’ll do another gig . . .” We never expected to be recording an album or doing anything like this; the whole idea was just to do a couple of festivals and call it a day. It has just blown up.

That’s the complete opposite to young bands who have to beg, borrow and steal to get on tours.
Steve Ramsey: It’s crazy. We don’t need to be trying hard. It’s very strange to be doing it. We’ve got really bad memories of playing shows. In the ‘80s, we didn’t play any shows anything like the gigs that we’ve been doing recently, Keep It True or the Purple Turtle [Camden, London] show. We didn’t expect that; I had quite a job trying to convince the rest of the band to play in London because it had always been shit in the UK. The memories of the ‘80s, for us? It wasn’t good.



Has your audience always been biggest in Europe?
Steve Ramsey: Yeah, that’s been the case with Skyclad as well. I mean, Skyclad did well in the early ‘90s, but Kurt Cobain died and that was the end of that; we didn’t get any press after that. It’s always just been kept alive in Europe, everything that we do. It was kind of like that. We had a big thing going on in Holland with Satan but we didn’t even play Germany. We did one tour, one support tour with Running Wild. That was as far as Satan got into Germany; we didn’t do any headline shows as Satan. That was a bit strange as well. Eventually, as Pariah, we did a few shows in Germany but still we didn’t have anything like the reception that we’re getting now.

Why did you change the band’s name so many times—Blind Fury, The Kindred, Pariah—do you think that was a mistake?
Steve Ramsey: Yeah, I think so, absolutely. I think it was a big mistake, changing the name, changing the line-up. But at the time, you can only go by the feedback that you’re getting; the first album, Court in the Act, got 2Ks in Kerrang!, two out of five, and they said it wasn’t very good, so when you start reading stuff like that you start thinking that you’re doing the wrong thing. We thought we needed to change. We realized later that it was a mistake but at the time we were getting classed as death metal and black metal and we weren’t that; we thought the name was making people think that about us. We’re just a traditional heavy metal band. The name is just a name. We are not Satanists. We’re not occultists or anything like that, and we don’t write any songs about the devil. Not a single song written about the devil; Satan, to us, just personifies evil, and the songs are about all the bad shit that happens in the world.

Do you think that bad music journalism cost you the early part of your career?
Steve Ramsey: Yeah, kind of, but it’s one of those things if you listen to the press: We were only impressionable kids and we were listening to people saying that what we were doing is wrong, then we changed. If we hadn’t listened to them we may not have changed. So I think it did, yes. When the first Satan album came out, if you think of all the albums that were out there at the time, there was nothing like that. The bands were playing traditional, straightforward heavy metal, and our stuff is a bit more out on a limb, a bit more progressive than anything that was around at the time, and I think the press didn’t want that; they just wanted more of the same shit that was happening, like Saxon and stuff like that.

You were maybe a bit too cavalier for them.
Steve Ramsey: Yeah, I think so, a bit over the top. Some of the stuff is very technical; the songs are big pieces of music; they’re not verse/chorus.

Who were the big influences on your playing?
Steve Ramsey: For me, personally, as a guitarist: Tony Iommi. For me the big influences in making me want to play guitar were Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, and they band that I compare us most to is Judas Priest, but if you tell people that now they start thinking that we don’t sound anything like “Living After Midnight”, and all the other stuff they did in the ‘80s. But I am talking about the early albums that they did, and especially Unleashed in the East, that live album that they did; all their songs were very intricate in the ‘70s and they sort of sold out with the stuff they wrote in the ‘80s to become big in the States. Songs like “Sinner” and “Deceiver”, “Tyrant”, all those songs had big key changes in the middle, harmony guitars and all that, and that is what we were into.

So you got dragged kicking and screaming to do some gigs, what made you want to write an album?
Steve Ramsey: The whole thing came from the one gig. We played the one show in Germany. The biggest thing was the young fans; we were expecting a room full of 40-year-olds and it was full of young fans going crazy, and they knew every word. It was unbelievable. Then we did a couple of shows, and Russ [Tippins, guitar] just came up with a song. We did one song, sat down and thought about it. If we were going to do this we couldn’t write what we would write now as musicians; we had to try and put ourselves back where we were and write like that, so we had a few little rules, like no odd time signatures; things that we wouldn’t have done back then but might do in our music nowadays. We tried to create the same vibe, and once we got four songs in we knew that we were doing the right thing. A lot of bands find it difficult to put themselves back in the shoes of when they were 18, 19 years old. I mean, I was 19 when we did the first album. We had to try put ourselves back there to write the new album, and it worked. And if it hadn’t worked, if we couldn’t feel like that, the album would never have been released. That’s what we had to achieve, and I think we did it.

How did you get into the headspace of the 19-year-old you?
Steve Ramsey: We knew when we started rehearsing for Keep It True; we knew that we had it. It was like, “Fuck! We’re good.” It felt really good. It sounded really good. The people outside the rehearsal rooms were saying, “Fuck me! Who is this band?” And we hadn’t lost the connection that we had with each other; it was still there; it was like it had never gone. We knew then that we could do it, when we started playing. We still had that special thing, and from there we wrote a song, then tried another song. We played a couple of them at a couple of festivals and they went okay. We took it from there.

Metal in ‘80s Britain always appeared to be a working class thing. Was that your experience of growing up in Newcastle?
Steve Ramsey: I suppose that is why you get into the music. But I remember the group of friends at school—me and Russ went to the same school, that’s where we formed the band—were more the middle-class guys than the metal guys, because we were listening to stuff like Rush, that kind of music, and it was more progressive than Saxon, more technical. So in some ways it works like that, the working class thing, but in others it didn’t for us.

What do you make of Skyclad’s influence in helping to create the folk metal scene?
Steve Ramsey: That’s actually more about being British. We definitely have that, whatever that is: We are definitely very British. Satan are very British, and Skyclad are really British, influenced by British things and British bands. We’ve definitely got that.

Justice has been a running theme for you. Why has that been such an enduring inspiration for you?
Steve Ramsey: It’s injustice, that was the main thing to write about through the years; we’ve written a lot about war and religion, and just the questions you ask every day when you watch the news. A lot of it is going back into history; so we’ll dip back into history and say maybe that it happens because of this, and basically the whole thing is based on religion and injustice. That’s where we came up with the idea of the judge being the devil. The devil is the judge of everyone and he is leading the way we are going, and that’s the concept. At the time, there were a lot of other bands knocking around in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal singing about sick girls, and drinking, motorbikes, stuff like that, and we wanted something else to write about. So it was basically about what was happening in the news, looking into history as to why this was happening.

Did you have much camaraderie with other N.W.O.B.H.M. bands, or did you maybe feel a bit out there on your own because you were more progressive?
Steve Ramsey: Yeah, in a way. But we’re still good friends with bands like Tysondog; Alan Hunter did some backing vocals on our first album, Court in the Act, and then later on we did some shows; we did a Pariah album [Unity] with Alan, and a few shows with him. We were all good friends; we all knew each other. Last year with did a show in Belgium and Tysondog were playing and it was great to see each other again. It was great to see them again. We didn’t see any of the infighting because most of the bands were signed to Neat Records and we weren’t, haha! If there was any infighting it tended to be the bands signed to Neat Records who were maybe getting preferential treatment, like Venom or Raven would get all the money put into them and other bands wouldn’t or whatever . . . But we were on the outside of that.

Who is exciting you at the moment, musically? Are there any other Live Evil bands that you’re familiar with?
Steve Ramsey: No, to be honest, I teach, so really the stuff that I hear now is the stuff that my kids listen to, y’know. I mean, they might have heard of some of these bands—I’ve heard of Antichrist and Midnight, but I can’t tell you what their material will be like. But obviously I will have a listen because I am interested to hear the bands that we’re playing with.

You’re coming back into a scene where there are loads of kids in bands that sound just like Angel Witch. You’ll love it.
Steve Ramsey: Well Angel Witch were one of my favorite bands ever so that’s great. I like the fact that it’s coming back to being a bit more musical; it’s great. My kids listen to bands like Evile and stuff like that, and they sound like they are coming from Metallica, and I think it’s all good.

**Satan Life Sentence is out May 21st through Listenable records. Pre-order it here*.
**Satan play Live Evil Festival on October 18th-20th, Highbury Garage, London. For tickets and line-up info, click here.

[kingdavid of steel]

apres deux ecoutes d'affilés au retour du KIT,je pense que l'on a là l'alboume de ce debut d'année

[Guix]

apres deux ecoutes d'affilés au retour du KIT,je pense que l'on a là l'alboume de ce debut d'année

Tu l'as acheté finalement ?

[kingdavid of steel]

non,c'est xuxl qui a pris le cd,moi j'attendrais le lp.

[metal militia]

je l'ai pris aussi mais pas encore écouté (parce qu'ils voulaient pas faire une première écoute moisie par le son du moteur du van au retour )

[Guix]

non,c'est xuxl qui a pris le cd,moi j'attendrais le lp.

ah ok !! Je me disais aussi

[lole66]

Album acheté au KIT et écouté 3 fois hier, que dire sinon excellent, on retrouve bien la patte du groupe et le son n'a pas été gonflé à outrance, alors comme david, album du début d' année

[Everflow]

Et de deux

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2013/04 ... testimony/

[olivier64]

ça va être un des albums de l'année (et je ne suis pas fan plus que ça du groupe ou de Court In The Act pourtant).

[Mr. Gig]

Pour ceux comme moi qui attendent de mettre la main sur le 33-tours, le disque peut être écouté dans son intégralité ici.

"Life Sentence", the new album from the legendary NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) band SATAN, can be streamed in its entirety at Terrorizer.com. The CD , which is also available for listening using the SoundCloud widget below, will be released on April 29 in Europe and May 21 in the U.S. via Listenable Records. The cover artwork for the effort was drawn by Eliran Kantor (TESTAMENT, HATEBREED, SODOM) and depicts a similar graphic concept as that of the band's debut album, "Court In The Act", originally issued 30 years ago.

"Life Sentence" was mixed by Dario Mollo, who is part of TONY MARTIN'S HEADLESS CROSS touring project and has worked with numerous artists as a producer and engineer, including SKYCLAD, ANATHEMA, CRADLE OF FILTH, LACUNA COIL, Tony Martin and Glenn Hughes. The CD was recorded September-November 2012 at First Avenue Studios in Newcastle, England and was mixed and mastered by Mollo at Damage Inc. Studio in Italy.

"We're really happy to have Dario on board to mix the album," SATAN said in a statement. "We've already had a few tracks back and they sound amazing. We wanted to capture the energy the band produce when playing live and we've done just that."

"Life Sentence" track listing:

01. Time To Die
02. Twenty Twenty Five
03. Cenotaph
04. Siege Mentality
05. Incantations
06. Testimony
07. Tears Of Blood
08. Life Sentence
09. Personal Demons
10. Another Universe

The songs deal with the following topics: injustice, impending death, reincarnation, atonement, third-world politics, and biblical retribution.

"Life Sentence" is the culmination of a process that began when the original "Court In The Act" lineup got together for an exclusive "one-off" reunion show at Germany's Keep It True festival in 2011 in what marked their first performance together in 28 years. The band was somewhat overwhelmed with the response — 10 minutes into headliners CRIMSON GLORY's set, the crowd could still be heard chanting, "Satan! Satan!" The SATAN bandmembers immediately booked more shows in Germany, Holland, Belgium and London, and have since kept in close contact with each other, writing songs and making demos.

The recording lineup for "Life Sentence" is the same as that on "Court In The Act":

Brian Ross (vocals)
Steve Ramsey (guitar)
Russ Tippins (guitar)
Graeme English (bass)
Sean Taylor (drums)

[Graptemiss]

Est-il possible d'acheter les pochettes des vinyles mais sans le disque dedans? Non parce que c'est joli certes, mais ça reste coincé à chaque fois. En plus ça serait moins cher.

Allez je suis sûre qu'il existe un bizarre collectionneur brésilien qui revend ça sur ebay.

[kingdavid of steel]

si ça sortais chez high roller ou BBTAD il y aurais une chance,en effet ils mettent parfois des pochettes test press dans leurs colis (j'en ai pleins).

[Cardinal-Sin]

Est-il possible d'acheter les pochettes des vinyles mais sans le disque dedans? Non parce que c'est joli certes, mais ça reste coincé à chaque fois. En plus ça serait moins cher.

Allez je suis sûre qu'il existe un bizarre collectionneur brésilien qui revend ça sur ebay.

en tous cas il existe des posters, c'est comme les pochettes vinyls sans disques, mais encore plus grand

[Graptemiss]

J'avais essayé mais tu les reçois tout pliés...

Oui les true vont dire que c'est comme à l'époque quand on détachait le poster central, mais quand même, l'esthétique est discutable.

[norde]

Commandé chez High Roller avec l'EP de High Spirits aujourd'hui, ça devrait allé assez vite pour arrivé à la maison !! Vivement !

[Psyko Killer]

Est-il possible d'acheter les pochettes des vinyles mais sans le disque dedans? Non parce que c'est joli certes, mais ça reste coincé à chaque fois. En plus ça serait moins cher.

Je suis pas sûr de comprendre l'intérêt???

[Graptemiss]

Je trouve les cd pratiques mais les pochettes des vinyles plus jolies

[kingdavid of steel]

certains labels sortent des vinyles avec le CD inclus en bonus dedans.

[Tony Le Pouilleux]

J'ai d'ailleurs plein de pochettes de Mystifier... ...j'avais acheté Bonded by Blood en vinyl à Annick sur ebay et en tant que graphiste, elle avait travaillé quelques mois plus tôt sur la conception du coffret que NWN avait sortie et elle a donc pris quelques pochettes pour emballer mon disque. Je les garde, car elles font joli.

D'ailleurs, en revérifiant, je suis retombé sur un autre exemple, une pochette Bang Your Fucking Skull et de la compilation Long Live Metal que Nathagnôle avait prises pour emballer mon vinyl de A Tale of Decadence.

[Rako]

J'ai commandé le cd sur Amazon, arrivée prévue cete fin de semaine, repoussée..............fin de mois...

[Thrashos]

Le cd tourne pas mal en attendant le LP pour ma part, et je prends mon pied!

[trace la route]

belle petite surprise!! je ne connaissais pas le groupe pourtant... Musicalement c'est assez proche d'Angel Witch, également dans l'ambiance mais de dieu que les guitares sont bonnes!!! juste un petit bemol sur le chant (même s'il colle vachement bien à la zic) car assez linéaire...

Mais bon une belle sortie....je continue de fouiller dans les tiroirs de la NWOBHM....que c'est bon cette époque!

[Dark Avenger]

Pour le coup, il ne s'agit plus de fouiller dans les tiroirs de la NWOBHM, mais de découvrir le plus rapidement possible le classique absolu de cette scene qu'est le Court in the Act de Satan(et accessoirement le Suspended Sentence du même groupe, le Out of Reach de Blind Fury, et enfin le Blaze of Obscurity de Pariah).