“Rebel Extravaganza” is the album that the scene needed in 1999. The most important thing was, of course, to make an album that sounded the way WE thought it should. Having said that, it was also important that a band like Satyricon took responsibility and tried to turn things around. Black Metal had come to a point where romance and bloodsucking seemed more important than darkness and extremity. We always thought: how can something be conventional and expected to be extreme? They can’t be both. “Rebel” was Satyricon taking everything, but everything, a step further. The album is aggressive and cold, and the production is much more powerful than previous albums, without sounding sterile. Sadly, the sceptics (“the straight edge Black Metal people" who think they like extreme music but really only want to hear things that they can easily identify and feel comfortable with) spread the word that this album was some sort of electronic, or industrial sound album. Needless to say, for those who know it, it’s the most Black Metal album we’ve ever made. The album was a commercial success, and it charted at position 22 in Norway. We toured the world with it as headliner and supported Pantera on their full European tour in 2000.