By Andrew Bansal
English band Satan emerged as the comeback kings of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal with the 2013 full-length album ‘Life Sentence’, their first in 26 years. Making up for lost time, they quickly recaptured the imagination of old-school metal fans worldwide with sold-out shows everywhere, including their first ever US tour in 2014. On the strength of this rekindled fire, Satan released a follow-up album called ‘Atom By Atom’ via Listenable Records in October 2015, and are now plotting for even greater global dominance. Last week, I spoke to guitarist Steve Ramsey to discuss the band’s comeback, the new album, the collaboration with Angel Witch’s Kevin Heybourne, touring, the NWOBHM genre and more. Enjoy the conversation below.
Steve, it’s a pleasure to have you on Metal Assault. First of all, ‘Life Sentence’ was such a big comeback album for Satan in 2013, and now you’ve put out the follow-up ‘Atom By Atom’. How different was the making of this new album in comparison, considering the different circumstances?
Basically, we were supposed to get together to only do a couple of shows but then Sean (Taylor, drummer) got in a car accident and damaged his ankle and knee, and couldn’t play the stuff. We did one gig in 2005 at Wacken in Germany with a stand-in drummer, Phil Brewis who was the drummer of Blitzkrieg at the time. But we decided that we were not going to do anything else because we wanted it to be the whole five members. But then Sean came back in 2010 or 2011 and said that he could play the stuff again. He couldn’t play the bass drum on his favored right leg anymore, so he retrained and learned to play all the stuff with the bass drum on his left foot, which was so good, it was unbelievable. We were so surprised. So we got together and rehearsed and it sounded great, and did that reunion show, not really thinking about doing anything else. But offers of other shows came in and we were rehearsing to do these shows, and then obviously, the way we are, some riffs started coming up in rehearsals (laughs). We started writing and then all of a sudden we had four or five songs, and we decided to make an album. We made some rules and said it would be be a follow-up to ‘Court In The Act’, so we had to imagine ourselves as being 19-year olds and where we were be as musicians then. We made some restrictions on ourselves on what we would use, and on ‘Life Sentence’ we didn’t use the odd-time stuff or the exotic skills that we’ve learned over the years, key changes and things like that. But the new album is a progression from that one, and we’ve put in a lot more of what we’re like now as musicians. I think musicians can definitely hear it, and I hope the fans can too.
This album was also more important in the sense that people would otherwise dismiss you as a one-off comeback thing. A lot of bands do that too, just reunite for a couple of shows and may be one album, and they don’t do anything else.
Oh yeah, but the ball has been rolling so fast for us over the last four years that we’re a serious band again. We’re all committed to it, and I think you can hear that on the album. The band is still growing in popularity, and we’re hoping that people forget that we’re a reformed old band and just start getting into what we do now.
Bands from those days, like the ’80s or even the ’70s, are coming back to do shows. But I feel that bands have to be relevant in the modern day and have to put out new music. What’s your take on that? Do you agree?
I just think it’s each to their own. If a band gets together that I used to love from the ’80s and I go and see them and they play all their old stuff, that’s cool for me as well. But I think the tendency is to make a record to try and gain a little bit more popularity. For us, we didn’t start the comeback thing with any idea of what was going to happen. We initially wanted to just do some shows, then we made an album, and there was no plan at all. But all I can say now is, I already know we’re doing a third album (laughs). We already know it’s here to stay, and it’s not a matter of just trying another one. In the past, all the music we’ve written has been just enough to make a record. When we made ‘Life Sentence’, people asked us whether there were any old riffs or material that we used from back in the ’80s, but that wasn’t the case at all and it was all freshly written. If it sounds old, it’s because we’re old (laughs). But on this album, we needed ten songs for it and we wrote 15. Actually one of my favorite songs that we wrote in that group of 15 didn’t even make it on the album because of its style. It started to have this very pessimistic feel about it lyrically, and the other songs didn’t quite fit with it. So, that and the other leftover songs be used in the future. We’ve never been in that position before where we’ve actually overwritten (laughs). We’re overproducing now, and it’s great.
On this album you also had a collaboration with Kevin Heybourne from Angel Witch. What was that like?
Well, the fact is, it wasn’t like we got together and did anything. We moved to London as a band just after we made ‘Court In The Act’. We were big Angel Witch fans and we met Kevin when they supported Iron Maiden in Newcastle where we lived. So when we moved to London, we became friends with him over the four years that we were there. So when we all came back home, he used to come and visit. In the ’90s, a lot of the times me and Graeme would be doing Skyclad stuff and he’d be around and we’d have a jam. He actually wrote some stuff, just little demos, not really with any plan to do anything with them. When we were writing this new album, Russ had dug out a cassette tape of some stuff that he had put out in a studio with Kev, and one of the riffs that Kev had written in one of these pieces really suited one of the songs that we were writing, called ‘The Fall Of Persephone’. So, the collaboration is that one of the riffs in that song is written by Kevin Heybourne, something that he did on a demo tape in the ’90s (laughs).
Very interesting. And as you said, over the last couple of years you’ve become an active band and you’re touring, not just doing one-off festivals. How has that been for you guys, and how have you adjusted to being so active after all these years?
We’re all working full-time, so it’s a bit crazy trying to fit it all in. So far, we managed to do everything we’ve been offered, and it’s been brilliant. All the things that we dreamed of when we were kids, when we made ‘Court In The Act’, we’re sort of fulfilling them all now. It was our dream to go to Japan because all the live albums that we used to listen to, ‘Unleashed In The East’, the Deep Purple album, ‘Tokyo Tapes’ and so many albums were all recorded live in Japan. We used to be like, wow! Imagine what it would be like to go to Japan! And now we’ve been to Japan (laughs), which was crazy. Coming to the States and doing a tour, we never thought that would happen. None of us had actually done it with any of the other bands that we’ve been in either, and for it to be so successful was another crazy thing. And then South America and a lot of the other places in Europe we’ve never played, specially Scandinavia, it’s all been so much fun and a dream come true.
From what I heard, all the US shows were pretty much sold out. I was out of town when you did the Los Angeles show, so I unfortunately missed that one. But does that mean you’re coming back to America soon for this new album?
Yeah, it’s already being planned. I think we’re doing some shows on the West Coast in April, and then over to the East Coast and further next October. There are talks of doing the Maryland Deathfest as well, so that’s another big thing. These festivals used to always be offered to us but we never quite managed to get there to do them (laughs). Now that we’re getting to do them, it’s just fantastic.
Over the years during which you were not active in Satan, there has always been younger bands that have played that old-school heavy metal style. Have you been able to keep in touch with any of that to see how the genre has been represented?
No, not really! We were all doing our own thing. Me and Graeme formed Skyclad in the ’90s. That’s folk metal and we kind of created a new genre there by doing that, so that’s where we were leaning, into the more progresive and experimental music, and we sort of lost touch with old-school metal. When we were told that we could play a festival in Germany and there would be a lot of fans wanting to hear us play ‘Court In The Act’, we kind of didn’t believe it (laughs). It took the guy five years to persuade us to play that festival, and then obviously when we did, we saw that it was going to work, because the fans were young. We expected it to be old people our age just reliving old memories and stuff, but it’s nothing like that and the majority of crowds now are young people.
Right, and you must be observing it in your headline shows too, be it America or anywhere in the world. There’s clearly a fan-following for this style of music still, specially among younger people.
Yeah, I think a lot of musical genres come around in cycles. Like in England there was a big resurgence in the ’90s of ’70s-style music, and you could hear all all the old rock bands of the ’70s in the music of the indie bands coming through in the ’90s. They were listening to the ’70s stuff and trying to do a little bit of that again. I think it comes around and it has its cycle, and we’ve hit that time when the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal has come around again. I don’t know how long it will last, but if it does and we’re still there (laughs), then we’ve done enough to warrant still being in the scene.
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