Baronen & Satan ‘Satan is a Lady’: High Camp Garage Death From Sweden

Satan is a Lady from Sweden’s Baronen & Satan is some dark and twisted high camp heavy garage rock fun. Imagine one of those sexy art house horror flicks from the early 70’s She Killed in Ecstasy springs to mind, especially since it’s the closest thing to a feminist art house horror flick I can think of. As I listen to the title track, all I can imagine is Soledad Miranda running through an ominous cliffside estate, looking glamorous and bloodthirsty to Stefan Olsson’s pulsating beats, Philippe Sainz’s driving jangly guitars, and Linda Rydelius menacing, vixenous wails. This album is truly the ultimate soundtrack to any Jesùs Franco flick you can think of. Don’t believe me? To illustrate my point, I’ve supplied you with the trailer for She Killed in Ecstasy and “Satan is a Lady”. Mute the trailer and hit play on the album, right now! Do it!

She Killed in Ecstasy

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[bandcamp width=100% height=120 album=1149097434 size=large bgcol=ffffff linkcol=0687f5 tracklist=false artwork=small]

 

Good, you’re back! Baronen & Satan’s Philippe Sainz took some time out to discuss Satan is a Lady, garagedeath, and recording with legendary producer, Jim Diamond (White Stripes, Dirtbombs).

MM9: Can you tell me a little about who Baronen & Satan are?

Philippe Sainz: Within Baronen & Satan there are a mix of strong personalities. A mix of crazy and calm. And we have different types of music influences. Sometimes it is quite difficult to stay within the frame so to speak. At the moment, Phil and Linda write the foundation of the songs and we have very similar tastes in what we like and not, but we write from two completely different perspectives. In the end, most of the songs writes themselves and becomes this strange art that we like to call Garagedeath. We have a fairly large self-distance but we are very serious with what we put out.

Stefan, our drummer is our music’s nerve and joy. He plays with 100% feel. He never skips a beat and he actually recorded the drums without any guitar to help. And he’s never gonna be predictable. He look so cute, but he has a lot of grim in him.

Linda is the melody maker! She can make anything sound both sweet and ugly at the same time. Her biggest achievement was when she sang a Cortex cover called Mind of Darkness. You can hear that she knows the darkness.

Philippe is a bit of a control freak. We have a saying in the band: ”Play what you want, as long as you play like this”. And that’s Phil in a nutshell. He has a great passion for noise and weird sounds and have too many pedals than we can count. But he is the core. Both Philippe and Linda is also artist which you can see in everything we do.

Leo, our bassist, is the new guy! He is tall and handsome with a fantastic ear for music. He fits perfectly in our weird and loving crew of misfits.

 

   

MM9: What was the inspiration behind your album “Satan is a Lady”?

Philippe Sainz: Oh, that album is an example of what we have in us. Call it an experiment. We just did it for ourselves so there are no barriers either in lyrics or music. When we started we completely spit out songs (at least one song a week) and that album is the best parts of those first songs. We were equally surprised at how different the music got when we wrote together. The inspiration was there, maybee a be a bit too much! It’s a pretty sprawling album, but we’re so fond of it. Maybe our biggest inspiration for this album was us two together doing it. We fed on each others energy and at that time we made maybe 50 songs.

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MM9: Is there a central story that runs through the “Satan is a Lady” album?

Philippe Sainz: The actual title “Satan is a Lady” feels important as the text starts with in the lyric “to be bad you have to be a man ….” Why is it like that? If you look at the music scene in Sweden, there is quite little room for different types of musicians. And even quite stereotypically, “what you see is what you get.” And if you do any kind of rock music, you have to look the part. Linda refuses to be the ”tough rock chick” in order to make rock music. Why cant you just be girl and it’s tough enough? Even a lady! So a lot of the lyrics deal with strong women who also can be cute and cuddly. From that point of view the unpredictable twist and turns in the music comes in. The album is like us, unpredictable. And it’s never ”what you see is what you get”. We wanna be so far away from that as possible.

MM9: Can you tell me about your experience recording with Jim Diamond?

Philippe Sainz: Jim! A little like a first love. He’s amazing, we hardly needed to say anything, he just knew how we should and would like to sound. So you could say it’s been very easy working with him.

He contacted us after we asked on our FB page if someone was willing to help us to record our music. So we started with 2 songs to see if it worked, an needles to say it did. So we did the whole album with him. We recorded everything in a small cabin in the woods here in Sweden and then sent everything to him to mix and master (put some JIM-magic-spells on it). He believed in us from the start and has been very supportive since then. And we love him! Probably next time we’ll go to France, or some other country to record in a analog studio with him. We just have to finish up a few more songs.

MM9: I also hear you have a new band member, can you tell me a little more?

Philippe Sainz: Yes! Leo is the new kid in town. He is the only one in the band that is a schooled musician, witch is great. His first instrument is drums and second bas. So he’s tight as hell. B&S is the first band where he plays bass, but have a long history of bands from his teenage years. Mostly grunge inspired bands, but he is a true music lover with a wide taste of music. Everything from punk, metal, rock to jazz and classical music. He also comes from a musical family where his mother played in a punk band in the 70s as a bassist. And like us, he is a great animal lover, witch is very appreciated. Meat is murder!

MM9: Where will you be touring in 2018?

Philippe Sainz: Were gonna play some shows here in Sweden from early spring and onward. We are starting to get some attention here now even thou our genre is very small here. We wanna build things up slowly and steady, so we choose what to do with a lot of thought. Our fans are more widespread than little Sweden, so we wanna get some help with arranging gigs in Europe soon. So if someone reads this and wanna help, mail us! baronenochsatan@gmail.com

 

MM9: Any plans to tour in the US in 2018?

Philippe Sainz: We definitely wanna do that. We know a lot of like minded people (musically) and US seems to like us. I mean, our label is Dirty Water Records USA. Hopefully it will happen this year. If not, definitely 2019. That would be soooooo great!

MM9: Are there any bands you’d like to tour with?

Philippe Sainz: Well the first one to comes to mind is Night Beats. But Linda would die ’cause they’re too good. There is also a French band called Magnetix that’s definitely on that list. Las Robertas maybe or King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard because they seem to keep an really open mind when it comes to music. Or just a really small awesome band from Peru called Los Brujos Negros.

Satan is a Lady is available on cassette and digital release courtesy of Dirty Water Records USA. Buy it now on Bandcamp or at the Dirty Water Records USA website.

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Ms. Moneynine

Musician, Music lover, Maniac! I’m also a freelance writer and contributor at Please Kill Me. And I’m presently calling the PDX my home. You can also follow me on Bandcamp.

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