Metal Contraband’s Chelsea recently spoke with Larissa Vale of Black Satellite about the band’s new release of Aftermath, working with Nita Strauss and singing on stage with Alice Cooper, covering Rammstein in Germany, and more. Check it out below: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chelsea here on the phone with Larissa Vale of Black Satellite. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me.

Of course, and congrats on the release of Aftermath. You’ve unleashed an incredible album with lots of powerful tracks. How are you feeling now that it’s out?

I just couldn’t be happier to share it with everyone, all the listeners finally. And, you know, we’re about to embark on tour with Mushroomhead, and we’re gonna be playing a lot of these songs live. I know it’s going to hit so hard and I just can’t wait.

I like that there’s a kind of variety in the sense that they hit hard in different ways, tracks like “Broken” or “Kill For You” have a heavy industrial touch, while other tracks like “Downfall” feel a little bit more straightforward hard rock. So, can you talk about your style, musically, and how you guys first found your sound?

I think it’s a lot of different influences, you know? I mean, there’s a little bit of alternative, industrial-like metal, and I think it’s important, at least when we’re trying to write music, to not box yourself in to a specific genre, and to just write authentically, you know, in how you feel. It’s, at the end of the day, it’s just a form of self-expression, you know?

100%. I want to talk about the music videos, it feels like you guys integrate that very large-scale sound into the videos. Everything’s always so cinematic, and a whole themed aesthetic and everything. So walk us through one of your recent videos and what that process looked like.

So, I have a background in cinematography, so I love to be super hands-on with all the videos, you know, building all the sets by hand and things like that. Specifically, with the last video, “Kill For You,” I like to conquer my fears in music videos, and we’ve done this in the past, with one of our songs, “Endless,” where I bury myself alive, which I actually had to do for the video. But with “Kill For You,” I have a fear of spiders, so I thought, why not put a tarantula on my face? Which is the last thing I would ever want to do, and we put it on my face, and those things move so slow, and I’m like, “Oh my God, can we get this over with?” And it’s just, like, crawling over my mouth, and I could feel its little feet and I’m like, “Oh my God”. But I knew it was gonna look really cool, and I’m really happy with the final result.

That is really intense and definitely unlocks a lot of fears for a lot of people, too. It’s kind of like, we were all hoping it was maybe an AI-generated spider, but no, you put the real thing on there, which is crazy.

Yeah, I know, I wish!

No, but that’s interesting, because you’re kind of pushing your limits in terms of your own personal fears, as well as pushing limits musically by making new songs and new creations and pushing yourself to the next level with each new album.

Right, exactly.

That’s great. So, tell me more about your background in cinematography. Have you also worked with other bands on music videos, or you’ve kept the focus more on your own work?

Yeah, no, I haven’t. So, I went to university for cinematography, but then as soon as I graduated, I just started this band and haven’t looked back, but I’m really happy that I had that experience, because I’m a visual person as well, and it’s also one of my passions, so it really translates into what we’re doing in that way.

Do you go in with a vision and a plan ahead of time? Do you kind of sit there after you’ve written the song and be like, “Okay, what do we want to go and do with this visually?” Or do you already kind of have the visual in mind when you’re writing and recording the song?

No, it’s normally after I think about it, and I’ll listen to the song a million times and just see, you know, what pops up in my head visually. And I’ll start to string little things together, and I’ll speak with my director and figure out, “Okay, well, this is the next crazy idea I want to do, how do we pull that off?” You know, we have another music video where I covered myself in 15 snakes, like, live snakes. It’s just pushing the boundaries. How do we take this another step further every time? And I think at this point, my director really looks forward to those phone calls ’cause he’s like, “All right, Jesus Christ, what craziness are we getting up to this time?” I mean, we’ve even found ourselves in situations where, for the music video for “Void,” we broke into an abandoned insane asylum on Long Island, you know, and the cops had to kick us out. Like, just craziness. 

Your director’s like, “What new creature are you going to bring in to the set this time?” 

Yeah, exactly. 

That’s funny, when you say you broke into it, was the storyline of the music video that you broke into it, or you actually did?

No, yeah, we actually did. I mean, it was all boarded up, and, you know, spray paint, and vandalism, and just rubble everywhere, and it was a scary place. It’s not like I wanted to be there any longer anyway, we kind of got what we needed to get, and yeah, security came.

You got a whole video out of it, so that worked out. That’s very cool, and of course you mentioned Long Island, you guys are a New York–based band. Are you based out of NYC or Long Island?

New York City, yeah.

There’s definitely a big, strong rock scene that comes out of New York. It’s maybe not talked about as often, so what do you feel about the rock scene that you guys are living in right now?

It’s really funny because as soon as we started playing live, we just kind of started getting tours, so now all of the local shows that we play in New York are shows on tour. And my band, we live kind of all over the place now, so, my bass player is in Chicago, my drummer’s in Austin, my guitar player does live in Brooklyn, so, you know, these days, it’s not like we’re playing a lot of local shows, and it’s just so interesting how it all unfolded so fast. I mean, as soon as we kind of dipped our toe into the local scene, we just started playing nationally, which is really exciting, too.

Absolutely, you’ve had some very recent, very big tours. You recently opened for Marilyn Manson. You also toured with Cradle of Filth and DevilDriver not that long ago, that’s a great lineup, and of course you mentioned the upcoming tour with Mushroomhead as well. In general, you guys fit well on the lineup with a lot of bands, because you can do the industrial, the nu metal, the radio-friendly hard rock, it seems like you have a good adaptability in playing live.

Yeah, thanks so much. Live shows are really important to us. You know, it’s really important to remember that it’s not just another show for us. For someone in the audience, it could be something they remember for the rest of their lives, so we kind of have a responsibility to play like our life depends on it, and I’m sure people can definitely tell. I mean, we kind of just go balls out, just leave it all on the stage, and it’s just our passion, it’s what we love doing.

Absolutely, and you guys do a great job of it. So, we’ve talked about your music so far, but when it comes to lyrics, do you feel that you guys have any kind of overarching themes or tones or topics that you like to touch on, or is it just kind of whatever comes out, whatever you’re feeling at the time?

So I like to write about a lot of personal experiences. I mean, it’s kind of funny, but when I’m having a bad day is when I kind of tend to gravitate towards writing music. So there’s definitely a lot of those darker themes represented on the songs. And, you know, I don’t like to shy away from it either. I think it’s important to have a place to be vulnerable and authentic, and that’s what makes it so relatable.

It’s like a bad day can make some of the best songs, honestly. It’s good fuel.

Yeah, exactly.

I’ve also seen some photos of you on stage with Nita Strauss, and I know she’s had some different vocalists on the road, so did you tour with her as Black Satellite, or did you also sing on any of her tracks?

No, so yeah, we were Black Satellite opening for Nita Strauss. The week before the tour, she DM’d me on Instagram, and she’s like, “Hey, I’m so excited to have you guys out. Do you wanna do a song with me during my set?” So she had me sing “Feed My Frankenstein”. So I think it was 40-plus shows that we had done together, and I got to do that song with her every night. One of the coolest experiences of that tour, when we played in Phoenix, which is Alice Cooper’s hometown, he actually came out to the show, and I got to sing that song with him on stage, arm in arm, sharing microphone, and it was just such an honor. After I got off stage, he just kind of patted me on the back and he was like, “you did good”, and that was just one of those, like, “wow” moments. That’s really cool to have that memory.

Oh, definitely, that’s incredible, I love that! “Feed My Frankenstein”, that’s perfect, I can really hear your voice fitting that song really well, too, or in any Alice Cooper track, really, so I love that you did that, that’s such a fun story.

Absolutely.

You do have a really powerful voice, and like I was saying about the adaptability on tour, it’s not just the idea of playing live, but it’s your actual voice that really fits a lot of powerful, different kind of styles of rock, so when did you first discover your style and your voice?

You know, it’s just really interesting, I think it’s just a conglomerate of all the things I kind of grew up listening to, and I just wanted to portray the same kind of attitude and aggression, and just, the fearlessness of all of my favorite vocalists, and it’s not even a specific decision, it’s not like you wake up one day, and you’re like, “I’m gonna sing like this”, it just kind of evolved into this thing, and I’m still discovering different things that I can do with my voice. It’s really important as an artist to never stop growing and expanding what you’re capable of.

Absolutely, it seems like you guys definitely are expanding, this is only your second album so far, but you guys have come so far since just starting, like you said, hitting the local scene, then all of a sudden you’re on national tours, you guys are absolutely soaring, and I love that for you because you are genuinely making really cool music.

Thank you so much. That means a lot to me.

Of course, well, thank you guys for doing it. I wanted to ask you, you were saying about doing an Alice Cooper cover, but I saw that you also did a cover a couple years ago of Rammstein’s “Sonne”, which is so killer. It’s just as intense as the original, but you can tell you put your own touch and your own voice on it, literally. So first, do you actually speak any German, or did you learn it just for the song?

You know, it’s interesting, I like to pick covers by choosing something, like, really ballsy, we also did Type O Negative, and it can be very controversial, because they have die-hard fans, and so, the next thing was, “Okay, well, what else am I gonna cover?”, and I picked Rammstein, because, one, I don’t even speak a single word of German. And two, I’m a chick trying to sing a Till Lindemann song, like, are you kidding me? But I just wanted to take the challenge, and I wanted to figure out a cool way to approach it, and I think it was really successful. We play it live, people go nuts, and we even played it live on tour in Germany. We played four shows in Germany, and I remember the first show we played there, I was like, “Oh, no, I can’t believe we’re gonna play this song in Germany”. I was like, “Maybe we should close with a different song”. Everyone’s like, “No, no, no, we’ve got to do it”. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, we’ve got to do it”. I just get out there, I just do my thing and own it, you know? Then people were coming up to me at the merch booth just speaking German to me, and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I don’t speak German”. They’re like, “Oh, really? Your German was actually pretty good”. I was like, “Are you sure? You promise?” They’re like, “No, it was really good”. And one of the other supporting bands on that tour with us, they’re from Germany, and I asked the singer, “Straight up, can you just tell me if it was okay, my German?” He was like, “As a native German speaker, it’s good”. So that just gave me a lot more confidence for the other shows that we had to do in Germany, and I thought that people would be like, “What the hell is this?”, but they really loved it too, because, like you said, you put a different spin on it, they already heard the original a million times, and now they get to enjoy it again in a different way and hear a different version of it, you know?

Exactly, that’s what covers are all about, you’re never trying to imitate the original, you’re putting your own energy into it, showing how much you love and appreciate the song, and you want people to hear what you do with it, which is really cool.

Totally.

That’s hilarious, though, about actually playing in Germany. I’m sure you were like, “These people are gonna think I’m faking”, or whatever, and then they were all like, “Oh, okay, native German over here. Sounds good”. That’s funny. Now, I also saw that Black Satellite, as a band, you have a lot of endorsements, including Bad Cat Amps, which is a great brand, and 64 Audio, which I’ve heard great things about. So what have been some of your favorite brands to work with, especially as a vocalist, with your sound and your stage experience as something so personal to, literally, your body, it’s your voice?

You know, all the companies we work with have been so great. One of our earliest endorsements, I think it was our first endorsement ever, we didn’t even really release a single, we just kind of threw it up on our website as a little preview, and it was Spectre Basses, and I met them in person at the NAMM Show in California, told them all the things that I want to achieve and do, and about the band and, our record that was coming out at the time, and they were just so down to earth and genuine, and at the end of the day, they like to believe in new artists, new music, and the next generation coming up, and they’ve been so welcoming and just totally hooked us up. And then we’ve just been so privileged to be able to work with a bunch of other companies as well.

That’s really cool, and yeah, NAMM is definitely a great place to make those kinds of connections. I always like to go and visit and cover NAMM from the media side, but you always overhear newer artists and up-and-coming bands making their brand deals and telling their story, and making these connections with these brands, and it is great that there are so many brands out there doing exactly what you just said, willing to support and help give that step up because they can recognize where talent is brewing.

Yeah, exactly.

So tell me about some of your past NAMM experience as well. Do you usually go every year, or was that just kind of a one-time visit?

I used to go, I think I went, like, three back-to-back years, then it was COVID, then started touring extensively, I think the last time I went…well, actually, I got to go this year, because I went in 2020, and then I made the point to go back again this year, and see everyone face-to-face. And they’re like, “hey, I’ve seen what you’ve been doing” and all this, and that’s really amazing, because it’s it’s one thing to say you have a dream, and then it’s another to take the steps to pursue it, and all the hard work that comes along with it, so I’m really grateful to have those connections. 

Very cool. Now, from looking to the past to now looking at the future, I know you mentioned the tour coming up with Mushroomhead, which is super exciting, that’s gonna be a great one and a great fit for sure, but tell us, what else is on the horizon for Black Satellite?

There’s lots of big plans, there’s nothing that I can say right now, but like I said, this has always been my passion and my dream, and I just kind of have one-track tunnel vision when it comes to Black Satellite, and I think that there’s nothing that’s going to stop me or, you know, give this up, so there’s lots to look forward to, especially next year and the coming years.

Well, we definitely are looking forward to hearing plenty more from you coming up, so thank you so much for your time today. It’s been really cool getting to know you better.

Thanks so much for having me!