Norwegian black metal band Satyricon played the first of their Australian shows ever in Adelaide on 1st December 2006, at HQ. Satyricon are two members on their albums Satyr Wondgraven, vocals & Frost, drums, and a stageful.
The supporting band, Ruins (Alex Pope, vocals & guitar; Dave Haley, drums; Kai Summers, bass; Joe Haley, 2nd guitar), hail from Tasmania. They are a young black metal band, and their performance seemed to indicate that they haven’t been working together on stage very long. The vocalist tried so hard that his vocals degenerated into a hardcore-type sound, which did not benefit them. They also didn’t appear to have much experience in working a crowd, much to the frustration of the vocalist. To be fair, their collective abilities are very high. Satyricon probably took a risk in getting Ruins to support them, but their music showed promise and in a few years they will be a force to be reckoned with.

Having read interviews with Satyr about Satyricon’s live shows, I was expecting excellent lighting and showmanship, and I wasn’t disappointed. The lighting was very well done: it fit the venue, the mood, the band: without it, the show wouldn’t have been as good as it was. Given that the tour was to promote Satyricon’s latest album Now, Diabolical, many of their songs were from that disc: That Darkness Shall Be Eternal, Now, Diabolical; Delirium; and so on. We were encouraged to, and we all did, sing along with K.I.N.G. Satyricon also played tracks from their second last album, Volcano, and from their hallmark album, Nemesis Divina, among others.

Satyricon had us all in their power: we clapped, we sang, we chanted. Satyr is a man who knows how to play a crowd. And the keyboardist left the stage whenever she wasn’t playing. Given that she went absolutely nuts to the music, it put the focus back on everyone else. It was, however, disappointing to not be able to see much of Frost, given that his kit pretty well hid him from view, but I’m not sure that there would be many ways around that.

The crowd was tenacious in howling the band out for encores. One audience member was heard to chant: ‘fucking c**ts, fucking c**ts…’, and when the band reappeared: ‘I take that back, I take that back…’

The encore was the best set of songs that Satyricon played, mainly because it included Norwegian Black Metal Anthem parts I and II: the heavy, unrelenting black metal that their set had lacked, and which everyone had gone to see and hear. The audience couldn’t help themselves: they banged their heads, they screamed, they raised their fists/horns in the air. I could say that this show was awesomely good—but Captain Obvious doesn’t always save the day.