Strong, dark atmospheres, coldness, eeriness - you can expect "Volcano" to invoke this in you. This album is mostly about powerful and quite straightforward Black Metal, with some Thrash and Hardrock elements thrown in. Don't bother so much with how it eventually differs from the other albums or what means are used to make the music - "Volcano" is a journey to the deepest dark, you just have to let it take you there!
Satyr / Satyricon interview, Voices from the Darkside, 2002
SATYRICON released their fifth album, Volcano, on this day in 2002 through Capitol / EMI.
It was a definite point for us to make the album a lot simpler, the reason for that being that we wanted to pour that dark element over the music. And in order for us to make that come through even more clear than we've ever done it before, we had to make the music as simple as possible. Everything was going to serve that main purpose, the uplifting dark atmosphere. If the music has a lot of what you could call unnecessary details, that will steal attention away from the feeling. If you listen to "Volcano" now, you're not going to concentrate on how the music is performed technically and musically; we wanted the atmosphere to grasp you immediately and to stay that way throughout the entire album, so we stripped it of all effects and all details that didn't help create the atmosphere, which is the wholeness of "Volcano".
Satyr / Satyricon interview, Voices from the Darkside, 2002
We've had [the "Fuel For Hatred" video] in our tourbus for a week or so now and we have watched it several times and it's simply blowing us away! That video is so monumental, so very much what we wanted, that we feel a very deep level of satisfaction with it. It's like a constant attack of aggression and intensity, and the scenery makes up for a very strong kind of darkness. It's everything we could have wished for, and we had the best man in the world to do a video for us - Jonas Åkerlund (famous for his work with Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Madonna, Prodigy, etc.; he was also the drummer on the first BATHORY album) - with his background and his skill... I think it's an honour for us to have worked with a guy like him. It's a victory every time that we get to work with the best people, who could have made a lot of money working with something else! I understand that this is something Jonas had a very strong feeling about, he strictly WANTED to do that video and he wanted to make it really GOOD - and he has done it, so many thanks to him for that!
Satyr / Satyricon interview, Voices from the Darkside, 2002