Photo: Stefan Rosic
When it comes to traditional heavy metal, there have been numerous old school acts still churning out solid studio records even in the modern age. Put Satan in that category – their latest album Songs in Crimson another explosive outing where the riffs jump out of your speakers, the rhythm section crushes, and the vocals of Brian Ross are in a class all by themselves in terms of power, precision, and personality. We reached out to guitarist Steve Ramsey to get more insight into the focused songwriting, the necessary evils related to video work, the authentic tones / production values for these new albums, how the pandemic made the band yearn for live performances more, a great Skyclad fan interaction moment, plus future plans including some overseas touring going into 2025.
Dead Rhetoric: Songs in Crimson is the latest Satan album. Where do you see this set of material sitting in the discography of the band – were these specific elements or areas you wanted to concentrate on that may have differed a little from the previous approach or output?
Steve Ramsey: The biggest difference is, the reason why the album is called Songs in Crimson is because it’s a real collection of songs, they are all individual songs. We realized when we were recording the material, there’s nothing over five minutes. Which is surprising, as there are normally at least a couple of epic tracks to push the boundaries with proggy, longer instrumental parts. This time, they are all punchy and to the point songs, thus why we came up with this particular album title.
Dead Rhetoric: What are some of the standout songs to your ears? For myself after a few spins of the record, I’m very impressed with “Era (The Day Will Come)”, “Turn the Tide” and the adventurous closer “Deadly Crimson” …
Ramsey: Oh, right, yeah! It’s funny that you picked those three. We are going to play “Era (The Day Will Come)” on the upcoming tour, we will also play “Turn the Tide”, and the other one for me I love is “Sacramental Rites”. It’s very 70s’ progressive rock, it has this vibe to it that I don’t know if everyone else is hearing it, I feel very good about it. The riff, the most challenging thing on the album, was with that song. We feel like it’s a collection of good songs and it’s come out really well. My favorites change all the time. When we started recording, my first favorite was “Era (The Day Will Come)”, and then it started changing to “Sacramental Rites”, and then it became “Martyrdom”, because they are similar songs. One riff songs, that is great to hear. I love “Whore of Babylon” as well.
Another thing we realized, we decided to play similar riffs continuously. We gave more room to Graeme (English) the bassist, and I think his work really stands out on this record. He’s great on all the albums, but I think we gave him a bit more space to be adventurous. He played more harmony parts instead of root notes. Those sounds have come out really well.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s it like for you guys to have such a tremendous vocalist as Brian Ross in your lineup?
Ramsey: He’s fantastic. For me, I don’t know how he keeps doing it. On every album he keeps doing something more extraordinary on the next. In a sort of little way, we took a step back on the guitars so that the bass and the vocals could step a little more forward. I quite like that. That’s one other thing I would point out that went very well about this album.
Dead Rhetoric: Were there any specific songs that took on the greatest transformation from the initial demo idea to how it appeared for the final version on the album?
Ramsey: There were a couple of songs that were already in the formative stages from the last album sessions, Earth Infernal, that we put on the backburner because they weren’t quite ready. “Frantic Zero” was one of those, and the other one “Captives”. We loved the idea of the riff, but it sounded too much like a poppy rock song (laughs). We went at it a few times, and we left it alone until this one. We had to develop it more to get the feel of the riff right. The lyrics to “Captives” relate to how musicians felt during the pandemic lockdown.
Dead Rhetoric: What other types of lyrical themes did you decide to tackle on this record?
Ramsey: There are different things. “Turn the Tide”, the single, it’s about comparing people to the Tin Hat Brigade, the people from the war that believe that foreigners shouldn’t be able to come into our country. Holding back people, it’s ridiculous.
Dead Rhetoric: Tell us about the making of the video for “Turn the Tide” – how did the ideas float about to have this be a half animated, half performance clip, as it’s definitely visually appealing on both angles?
Ramsey: Oh great, I’m glad you like it. We’ve had some other people moaning about it, saying that we were using AI or something. Making a video for us is a necessary evil. It’s not something we’ve enjoyed doing – but videos are now a necessary thing for social media to promote the band. We do it, but we don’t enjoy doing it as much as we enjoy playing live.
The making of it, we did it in a recording studio up in Durham, which is near Newcastle. Somebody had taken an old church and developed it into a recording studio. He left the stained-glass windows in there, so it seemed like a really good idea to have the miming of the song in that situation. The animation, we really liked some of the animation that we had on our last video for “Burning Portrait”. The idea was to add more into this one and have the band play as well. Some people like it, some people don’t. If your video is selling the song, then the song is not good enough.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you believe Satan has also been able to stand out compared to peers due to your more organic, hands-on approach to the production values and tones – where you want to keep the proceedings less digitally driven and punchier, in your face, and analog-oriented?
Ramsey: Yeah. We get asked this a lot. When we got back together and we said that we were going to do a new album, it needed to be a follow up to the last album so we couldn’t go straight into the digital world. It wouldn’t sound anything like the old band. We just did it, we did use a digital platform to record on, we organically played the stuff live. We don’t use click tracks; we don’t use everything in life that others do to make things easier. We play the songs, we leave little mistakes in the music, we don’t fix every little bit. I feel like nowadays with the modern technology, every band likes to iron out every little thing. We leave it in there, we were brought up in the 70s where bands went into the studio, recorded it, and that was the record. We want to keep things like this.
Dead Rhetoric: Your fellow guitarist Russ Tippins mentions in the background information for the new album that ‘Satan did not reunite just to trade on past glory, and that if you want nostalgia, this is not the band for you’. Now that you are at a point in your career with seven studio albums, and five since resurrecting the band, how do you feel about your place in the scene and your stature – do you believe you’ve garnered the respect and admiration from multiple generations of metal fans due to your work past and present?
Ramsey: Yes, very much so. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing it. There’s no way we would have come back and made a record if we didn’t think the magic was there. We are not doing this for accolades – we are doing this because we have the creativity within us. At any point if we feel like we have lost that magic, then we will stop.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you think it’s harder to create albums that stand up to a record like Court in the Act, which is considered a NWOBHM classic?
Ramsey: All of the albums that we’ve produced in the second coming of the band, I think they stand up well next to Court in the Act – especially the new one. It’s easy to say, you probably hear it every time from a musician that thinks the newest album is their best one. I might change my mind, because I have gone back to Cruel Magic as one of my favorites too.
Dead Rhetoric: How do you feel you personally changed or developed when it comes to your life views and musical ideals from the prolonged pandemic?
Ramsey: I think everyone that went through the pandemic learned to appreciate life a little bit more. I remember when it started, I was told I couldn’t go to work, as I am a teacher at school. All of the teachers, I am a visiting teacher that goes into a lot of different schools and because of COVID they obviously couldn’t have me going in. I was on the sideline for over a year. I remember the first three months, I really enjoyed it. I wrote a lot of music, recorded in the summer, and then by July I realized I should be playing in Italy now, Germany now, and I got really depressed. The most important thing in my life is gigging, if you take that away, that’s what I live for. I am really appreciating what we do now, especially when we are off on tour now.
Dead Rhetoric: What is a pivotal or critical moment that helped shape your musical career?
Ramsey: That’s a good one. I guess from the start, I was going to see a lot of bands when I was younger before I learned how to play the guitar. That’s how I bumped into Russ. He told me he had a guitar, and he asked if we wanted to come down and have a listen to him playing. I think the pivotal moment was hearing Russ knock out “Motorhead” by Motörhead, and then showing him in one of my notebooks the logo for Satan. I said, do you want to put a band together, and that’s how we started.
Dead Rhetoric: Do you have a personal preference when it comes to the studio or live stage performances as a musician? Or do you enjoy both aspects equally for your career, just for their own reasons?
Ramsey: I enjoy both, I get a lot of energy out of both. I love the challenge of playing and creating. Every time we do an album, the challenge of the new songs, and getting the songs live down to the point where I don’t look at my guitar and can jump around and enjoy myself. Performing the music on stage, that thrills me. The studio, when you jam a solo and you know that it’s perfect, that is great for me.
Dead Rhetoric: What has been your favorite fan interaction story that happened in your career?
Ramsey: Oh, right. There’s was one show I did in my other band Skyclad where I will never forget it. The gig we did at the Marquee in London, it was sold out and jammed. It was hot, and the crowd for the band was insane, stagediving. There was a guy in a wheelchair at the front of the stage, being crushed against the stage. The fans pulled him out of the way, picked his wheelchair up, and put him on the stage. We spent the whole gig with him on the stage with a bottle of Jack Daniels, we did the whole gig around him. That was one of my favorite moments.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the agenda for anything related to Satan or Skyclad over the next twelve months or so? Are there other specific bucket list items you’d like to check off in this point of your career?
Ramsey: Yeah, there was one we were going to get to then COVID hit. Playing in Australia, we were looking forward to doing that in September or October of the year that the pandemic hit. We never did that. We are touring the states next year in March, that’s part of the plan. Nobody believes this, but soon we will be doing out first ever Satan UK tour. We never toured in the UK; we’ve only played one-off shows. We never played in Scotland, we’ve never played in Ireland, and we will be hitting those areas in the next two weeks.
Skyclad – it’s on the backburner for a reason, and we are going to sort it all out when we come back from this tour. We need to have a sit down; I don’t want it to fritter away. I wrote a whole album’s worth of music, and the singer has writer’s block right now, he can’t come up with anything. We will have to sort it out.