SATYRICON

Satyricon is a Norwegian black metal band, formerly known as Eczema. The band credits their first album, ''Dark Medieval Times'', with starting a black metal subgenre dubbed "medieval metal". The album showed off the fascination Satyricon had with the Middle Ages, along with raw black metal blastbeats produced by Kjetil Haraldstad, mixed with acoustic guitar and flute. On the next album, ''The Shadowthrone'', this medieval spirit was continued.



Regarding one of their latest albums, ''Volcano (Satyricon album)'', frontman Sigurd Wongraven stated in a press release/biography on their homepage that "the music is rock based but more extreme; it is black metal pushing the boundaries that began with bands like Venom (band) and Bathory (band), reinventing ourselves based on a foundation of rock oriented black metal is our philosophy." It resulted in a total of 4 Awards for ''Volcano'' being, the Norwegian Grammy for "Best Metal Album", an Alarm award for "Fuel For Hatred" in the category for "Song of the Year", as well as The Alarm Award for "Metal Album of the Year" and The Oslo awards for "Best Overall Album".



Satyricon participated in the Darkthrone tribute "Darkthrone Holy Darkthrone", released by Moonfog Productions in 1998, covering the song "Kathaarian Life Code". Also in 1998, Satyricon participated in the Bathory tribute "In Conspiracy With Satan", released by Hellspawn/No Fashion Records, covering the song "Born For Burning".



In 2006, the band released a new studio album, ''Now, Diabolical''. The album has generated a great degree of controversy in the black metal underground, due to its straightforward, "radio-friendly" take on the genre. The album is selling extraordinarily well, however, even outside of black metal circles.