Interview

Satan Guitarist On New Album, Skyclad & NWOBHM

Only yesterday, during the introduction to our interview with Tygers Of Pan Tang, we mentioned how important the North East of England was to the British metal scene of the 1980s. There's no need to go through another list, but the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that there was one very important band left out of the introduction when it comes to metal in Tyne and Wear and that would be Satan.

Having formed in 1979, Satan would go on to release one of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal's greatest albums, "Court In The Act" four years later, before laying the name to rest soon after and changing their moniker to Blind Fury. After another album as Satan, "Suspended Sentence," they would once again rechristen themselves, this time to Pariah, before going their separate ways. As always, Satan returned to Earth, first as a one off in 2004 and then again in 2011 and since then, the band with the devilish tag has been on something of a roll, releasing a further three albums.

Tomorrow, the fourth album since their return, "Earth Infernal," will be unleashed via Metal Blade Records and it seems to be the darkest and most gritty offering from the Geordie legends yet. To find out more about what went into this record, we caught up with guitarist Steve Ramsey, who divulged all the info about the themes, art, touring plans and more, as well as what's happening with Skyclad, the folk metal pioneers which he also co-founded. You can read the interview below or listen to it in full at the bottom of the screen.

Diamond Oz: The new album, "Earth Infernal" is out on April 1st. What can you tell me about the title of this record?

Steve Ramsey: The title is about the planet burning, basically. There's no title track but a couple of songs refer to the title. We've observed over the past couple of years, especially in this country, that people were becoming so obsessed with the pandemic and the politics, that they forgot that the planet is on fire, we just thought we'd remind them.

Oz: Yeah, it's not something to ignore. It's cool though, it's like an umbrella term when it comes to the actual songs on this album. Like you said, there's a few tracks that relate to the title.

Steve: Yeah, there's a couple of tracks that relate to it. "Earth We Bequeath" is kind of like a time capsule message for future generations, sort of apologising for what we've done. There's another one, "Twelve Infernal Lords," which is kind of like a horror story but the idea is like this supreme court made up of twelve demon judges, including the guy on our artwork. They're hellbent on destroying the environment by using laws, bending laws, to plant seeds of mistrust and chaos and fucking the planet up.

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