Watch your back, prepare for a NWOBHM attack! If you loved classic Satan works such as ‘Court In The Act’ as much as we do, then you’re going to go crazy for the newest album by the Newcastle metal legends. ‘Songs In Crimson’ is set for release on September 13th via Metal Blade Records, and it marks another cut-throat addition to their growing body of works.
Satan‘s history is storied, their albums and incendiary live shows, iconic. They may quip that their career has been “forty-four years of prolonged mayhem with a twenty-year lunch break” — forming in 1980, eventually pausing before reuniting in 2011 — but circa 2024 finds the band thriving, writing, recording, and touring at the top of their game.
Proof positive is their seventh studio album, and third for Metal Blade, ‘Songs In Crimson’. If 2022‘s ‘Earth Infernal’ was brutal, up-tempo and with loud guitars, guitarist Russ Tippins calls Songs In Crimson “concise. It‘s more to-the-point and gets there quicker. One of the reasons behind the album title is that this record is very ’song‘ focused. There‘s more punch this time around. Each chorus speaks for itself.”
Satan rails against characterless, metronomic, and “cut and paste music on a digital dog leash. Recording in the 21st century has become no more than a series of binary code. Call me reactionary,” says Tippins, “and maybe I am, but every bone in my body wants to rebel against the incoming tide of ones and zeros.” With influences from King Crimson to Mercyful Fate, Satan‘s own stylings remain unique, the band‘s NWOBHM origins a springboard for musical and lyrical creativity, commentary, and nonconformity.
While Songs In Crimson features lyrics including “a once-great nation is going down” and “this is the end of an era,” the band offers no quick fix. “There is always hope; solutions are not for us musicians to proclaim,” Tippins believes. “Each song has its own different theme. While there is no title track as such, the song ’Deadly Crimson,‘ which is an anti-capitalism narrative, is as close as it gets to that. As a concept, making money from money is fatally flawed in that it depends on constant growth,” Tippins says. “But constant growth is obviously impossible; a conveyor belt of sacrificial lambs.”
Honed by years of collaboration, brotherhood and love, Satan’s chemistry is unbreakable. “We played at a metal festival where the headlining band had zero original members,” Tippins says. “I cannot get my head around that, though I admire their bravery. We are the genuine article. We did not reunite just to trade on past glory,” he concludes. “If you want nostalgia, this is not the band for you. We look only ahead and always will.”
If 1983‘s ‘Court In The Act’ started Satan‘s aural journey, and 2018‘s ‘Cruel Magic’ was a game-changer, where does ‘Songs in Crimson’ stand in their heavy discography? “The goal is to further consolidate the style we‘ve established, the pathway we‘ve been on since the reunion,” Tippins says. “Part of that style is that each release must have something that sets it apart from its predecessors.”
This one certainly stands apart. ‘Songs in Crimson’ was produced by the band and Dave Curle of First Avenue Studios who also engineered, mixed, and mastered the record. It will be released September 13th.
Catch Satan, Seven Sisters, Haunt, and Hellfire on the following dates:
