Arriving from Herndon, Virginia in a psychic blizzard of garage-birthed fury and fuzz-crazed abandon, Satan’s Satyrs stand proud as a malignant manifestation of all that’s debauched and demented in heavy music. What’s more, their incoming third album, ‘Don’t Deliver Us’, beamed in from a metaphysical zone of over-amped ’70s power trio action and exploitation-movie malice, may well be the most gory and glorious thing they’ve thus far wrenched into creation.
A new wild outpost in a freakrock lineage that extends from Edgar Broughton Band and Blue Cheer through Alice Cooper, Mountain and beyond, this is a significantly more stripped down, raw and intense listen than its predecessor ‘Die Screaming’. “We wanted to recapture the primitive thrust of rock ‘n’ roll to our sound” asserts frontman Clayton Burgess, also of Electric Wizard, who indeed recently achieved the considerable feat of completing a Stateside sell-out tour performing double-duty in both bands. ”That was an absolutely exhilarating experience for us in Satyrs,” he enthuses. “It made us so much tighter as musicians and bandmates. The rush of playing in front of so many people, we live for that.”
Indeed, not only have Satan’s Satyrs recovered the heinous in-the-red overload that characterised their debut cult classic ‘Wild Beyond Belief’, yet whilst that album was made entirely by Burgess himself, ‘Don’t Deliver Us’ boasts an electrifying band chemistry palpable throughout gonzo sonic debacles like the alarmingly catchy garage-stomper ‘(Won’t You Be My) Gravedancer’ and the Stoogian and stygian ‘Full Moon And Empty Veins’, which Clayton dubs a tongue-in-cheek ‘Dracula’s love song’. “When the three of us get together, it’s loud and raw, no matter what we’re playing.” he notes “If the last album was of the mind, this is of the body. These new tracks go for the throat, for the gut, and other areas”.
The cerebral realm that Satan’s Satyrs dwell in remains to the onlooker one of late-night exploitation and biker flicks, overflowing ashtrays and unfettered debauchery in all its forms. Yet Clayton, he whose personal aesthetic has dominated this band since its inception and whose grand guignol vocals morph the shamanic caw of Ozzy, the sneer of Alice and the heroically unfashionable influence of Stray’s Steve Gadd into one unholy whole, remains loath to place this untamed beast anywhere too specific just yet.
“I don’t want gimmicks to weigh this band down.” he emphasises “All I can say is that I’ve watched Tony Iommi rip into the opening chords of ‘War Pigs’ from 30 feet away. I’ve had Bobby Liebling look me straight in the eyes as he sang ‘All Your Sins’. I’ve had my hair stand on end and felt strange frissons from the music which means so much to me. My ultimate desire is to reach people in the same way with our music. That’s what I strive for”