“Our music is about catharsis... I don’t gravitate to songwriting when everything is going well”: Inside the gothic darkness of Black Satellite

Larissa Vale is a long way from home. At the tail-end of an epic first-ever European tour in support of English extreme metal legends Cradle Of Filth, the Black Satellite vocalist looks out the tour bus window passing through a town somewhere in Germany with a tongue-twisting name that she can’t fathom how to pronounce. Fatigue at this stage in a touring-cycle is the norm for most musicians as the tug of homesickness and those endless hours on the road punishingly to rack up. Larissa is in no hurry to return, however, from an adventure she’s spent her life working towards.

“I’m a bit of a road dog,” she flashes a grin. “I could tour forever. Everyone else is pretty worn out right now, but I could do another four weeks. I love the unusual scenarios that you find yourself in out on the road. That could be when you find yourself showering in some random truck-stop or when you end up seeing something batshit crazy going on at a show. Every day is a new adventure. The madness. The fights. The mayhem. I mean, when else would you ever get to experience that stuff? And I kinda like roughing it, too. I actually slept on the floor the last eight nights in a row!”

Longtime fans will hardly be surprised that Larissa didn’t gravitate to this life in pursuit of glitz and glamour. Forming Black Satellite while studying cinematography at Penn State, a big move to New York City and time wasted in dead-end jobs confirmed that she should commit to music full-time.

“I just saved up some money and quit,” she remembers. “I was gonna really go for it and not hold back. It was like, ‘If we don’t make this work out we’re just gonna end up as losers.’ Not that we needed any extra pressure. But we did need to to give this our everything. It led to this tunnel-vision focus. We literally played two local shows and started touring. Now we’ve done 12 tours!”

Converting that commitment to recorded output has been a little trickier. Although debut LP Endless dropped in 2017, establishing the gothic and industrial tendencies that would endure, its 10 songs fail to communicate the raw power, dirt-beneath-the-fingernails grit and roadworn experience of the band they are today. 2018 covers of Type O Negative classics My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend and I Don't Wanna Be Me marked an evolution, tightening ties to the shadowy Big Apple underground that she would call home. 2020 single Void and a 2021 rework of Rammstein’s Sonne showcased growing muscularity and international ambitions.

The shortage of original material doesn’t reflect any lack of creativity, however, with both Void and 2023 single Broken offering a guarded sneak-peek of the bigger vision on long-gestated second album Aftermath – originally scheduled for August 2020 – which only now is close to finally seeing the light of day.

“It’s funny how stuff like that works out,” Larissa shrugs as we point out the irony of an album called Aftermath emerging after so many years of upheaval. “I guess this is just the way it was meant to be. Obviously, COVID had a huge impact on us, as it did on so many bands. We didn’t want to be in a position where we put out this record [and have no-one engage with it] then have to put out another as soon as things reopened. Nor did we want to shelve it. We didn’t want to not give the fans new music, either, hence the singles. But we needed Aftermath to be right and to receive the deserved exposure.

“It’s evolved over the years, too: there are like 15 songs on there now. Some upbeat. Some alternative. All industrial metal. And it’s genuinely our strongest-ever material. There are a couple more singles, but you should be able to hear it by the summertime!”

Truthfully, struggling through that kind of adversity – the need to endure hard times and to fight for the music you believe in – has been exactly the kind of driver that Black Satellite thrive upon.

“I obviously write about a lot of darker themes,” Larissa continues. “For me, our music is about catharsis. I don’t really gravitate towards songwriting when I’m feeling happy and everything is going well. I’m the kind of person who wants to write a song when everything has gone to shit and I’m just stuck there in my room. I’m really not afraid to be very vulnerable and put those darker elements on display. They’re all emotions that we all have, all part of the human experience.”

Accordingly, the last few years have been more about empowerment than melancholic wallowing. With the recent departure of longstanding guitarist Kyle Hawken, Larissa is now a focal-point and bandleader alone. Although she stresses that her bandmates are “brothers in arms, [alongside whom] I’m going to war out on the road every day” she is the artistic driver both musically and visually – even putting that cinematography degree to work on music videos – and the punchy personality and shimmering darkness of Black Satellite’s future is a reflection of her own.

“I guess the best way to explain it is that when people come up to talk to me at the merch table after shows, they tend to say that I don’t sound like anyone else they’ve heard before, or that ‘I don’t sing like other girls,’” she unpacks an anecdote. “The other night, this guy came up to me like, ‘Please don’t be offended... but I didn’t believe my friend when he said there was a chick onstage! He thought I was a dude! As it happens, and not for any reason, I was never really influenced by any female vocalists growing up. I’ve always just wanted to hone in on my own individual sound.”

Thrillingly, said sound still feels like it’s just getting started. With the support of veterans like Cradle frontman Dani Filth and Coal Chamber/Devildriver legend Dez Fafara, a war-chest of fresh material ready to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public and a genuine attitude towards performaning where they see that every show could be their big-break or last shot, stardom will surely soon come calling. But the question is: will Larissa still be the gritty road-dog we know when it does?

“I don’t require a lot,” she laughs as we wave farewell. “Maybe we’ll have slightly better accommodation, but we’ll never have that crazy rider. For sure, we’ll still soundcheck in like five minutes. We’ll still be down to earth. We’ll still try to be as good as we can to the bands on tour with us. Honestly, no matter what, I think a part of me will always feel like I’m roughing it…”

Black Satellite’s second album Aftermath is due for release later this year.

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