They may have left the corpsepaint in the cupboard, but Sathamel remain one of the UK’s most strident navigators down the path of blackened death metal. Vocalist Daniel Kalinowski and guitarist Nathan Caven spoke to Paul Castles at Bloodstock, shortly before their scintillating performance on the New Blood Stage.
How did you get the opportunity to play at Bloodstock?
Basically, we saw that Simon Hall had posted something about CD submissions so we sent over our video of our single ‘Take The Rot’ which we released last year. A few months later he got back to us and offered us a slot. At the time we were having a bit of tension within the band, not bad things, just discussing different things about where we wanted to go and things like that. I had just driven between sites where I work and I don’t have mobile phone access. The message popped up in the car with a screenshot of Simon’s email, it was a great feeling.
Will today be your biggest gig?
Yep, we played The Dome in London when we opened at Incineration Festival a few years ago but today is the biggest in terms of things like media presence.
What have you been up to in the studio?
We’ve a new EP due out in November called ‘Opposition To Life’ and that will include the three tracks we’ve released over the last year or so – ‘Take The Rot’, ‘Perennial Flock’ and ‘Ad Nauseam’. There’s also a new video which we filmed last week. We’ve just seen a trailer and it looks awesome. So we’re looking forward to getting that out and we’ll be playing those three tracks today. We’ll see how it engages a festival audience which is very different to what you get at a standard club gig. It’s a different vibe and so will be a mainly new audience for us. Just being on the poster for Bloodstock has done us so much good with previews and interviews. Our numbers on Spotify have gone up drastically and we’ve not even done anything yet!
How much is today a platform for the band?
We do hope to build on today. We came out of Covid with a new line-up. Those people who’ve seen us play before will know that previously we did all the corpsepaint on stage but we no longer do that. Today is about showing the band for what it is, just five guys playing black/death metal in the way we want to. Nothing has disappeared from the band apart from that visual aspect. It’s just about building the band and this feels like the best time for us to play Bloodstock.
And all the guys are on same page?
Yes, most of the time! We normally play 45 minutes or so but today we just have half an hour. So we have had to really narrow down the song choices but we got there in the end and feel we have the right selection of songs for this audience. We want to cater for old fans as well and it will be as brutal as we can make it.
You played a few shows in Ireland this year, how did that go?
It was incredible from start to finish. The audience were so involved with circle pits and everything else. We had never been there but it seemed the crowd really wanted to see us. We headlined and it was strange as they have later curfews, so we were going on at 11pm wondering if anyone would still be there. We played with Irish band Sacred Noose and had assumed that they would headline but they allowed us to do it. They’ve only been going a short time compared to us, and we had a great response at every show, it was awesome.
Did you enjoy visiting Ireland as a country?
It was beautiful. We saw some great sights. We’ve never seen so much green. The hospitality and venues was great. We visited Blarney Castle. We all enjoy a Guinness and we discovered Murphy’s too. And we’ve now found a pub in Leeds with Murphy’s which is great!
Are there plans for a new album – the last one was Horror Vacui in 2019?
We wanted to feel the band back in with the singles, like baby steps. We recorded ‘Take The Rot’ and it felt really good, so we continued into making the EP. We’ll live with that for a short while now but our guitarist Pat is well into writing so we may have something in a year or so.
Are any of you involved with any other bands?
Our bass player Dale plays in Blasphemer. We knew him when he was in a band called Masochist and we always always wanted him to be in our band. When the slot came up again we sent him a message. He’s always busy but we were delighted when he agreed to join.
Finally, any more shows coming up after today?
We’re at the Fulford Arms in York in September with The Infernal Sea. We’ve a few things lined up but not yet formally announced, but we’d love to do another mini tour. Europe would be great as we’ve played to UK black metal audience for years. Bands like our friends Devastator are playing in Europe all the time which can really expand your audience.
