Confessions Of A Heretic: The Sacred And The Profane: Behemoth And Beyond

by Adam Nergal Darski

  Nope. It was just Zbyszek. Another moment passed, and then I heard more footsteps: the pitter-patter of tiny but chubby feet. The pitch of these was much higher, like that of a large mouse. I didn’t even have to think who it was because I knew already that it was our sound engineer, Malta.

  And your point is?

  The point is that we spend so much time together, that we can even recognise each other by the way we walk, snore, or even fart. I often say that a band is not a group of friends; it’s a family. I treat them all like brothers.

  You threw darts at your real brother.

  I throw insults at these ones. That’s what it’s all about. A friend is someone who you can always count on, for better or worse. You can have different relations with your brothers. Sometimes you can be friends, but sometimes they’re like a splinter in your ass. That’s the same way with a band.

  Do fights also happen?

  No, but it got close a few times, in various configurations. They can sometimes fight each other, too.

  And then Nergal gives them a spank, pats them on the head, and punishes them?

  Sometimes you have to say who is right and who is not. I always try to be objective. And I speak openly if one or the other goes over the line. But that doesn’t mean I am always the father. Sometimes I get fucked up and do stupid shit like a spoiled kid. Then somebody else straightens me out.

  For example, during the promo tour of Apostasy, I had a toxic combination of excessive arrogance and dangerous ignorance. All the guys gave me some signals that I wasn’t all there in the head, and I was beginning to lose connection with the planet that is Earth. It took a while, but I finally stopped, looked at myself, and saw that something was not right indeed. I had to let off some steam.

  So your band family is just you and the three other musicians?

  It used to be like that. But with time it all expanded to a huge size, and I slowly lost control over it all. There are people who go on tours with us, there are people on the other side of the planet who run our shop, our website, people who help me set up interviews … Behemoth is a complex mechanism today. A lot of these people are members of our family. For example, Maciej Gruszka, our irreplaceable webmaster, and the guy who runs Behemoth’s internet shop. And, also, the guy I mentioned above—Malta.

  Do you treat him like a brother?

  Once, we were playing a show in Costa Rica and it was his birthday. He can’t swim, so we thought the best present would obviously be to throw him into the water. We knew he had had his passport in his pocket, so we had to trick him. We started looking at our passports, and I said, ‘Arek, show us your passport. How do you look on the photo?’

  He gave me the document, and then he was immediately in the pool. He almost drowned. We took him out like a wet rag. To appease him, we offered him a shot of coke. You can buy things like that on every corner there, like apples at the market. We had a whole bag. But I had secretly replaced it with powdered vitamin C. I told him, ‘I’ll show you how it’s done.’ And I snorted loads of that shit, and I literally licked the rest of it from a windowsill.

  He looked at me in admiration, nodded his head, and said, ‘That’s exactly why I like you!’ He rolled a dollar bill and took his turn. Someone asked, ‘Arek, how’s the stuff?’ and he said, ‘Fuuuuucking awesome!’

  True brotherly love, eh? Do you support each other on tour? Do you guys often need each other’s advice?

  It happens. I remember that, right after the Demigod premiere, we started a huge tour of Canada and the States—fifty concerts in all. We played the last show of the American leg with Danzig. It was the grand finale, the most important concert of the whole tour. Los Angeles, Gibson Amphitheatre, over fifty thousand people …

  The next day we were due to go to Canada by ourselves. We had only a few hours before the show was to begin, so we started preparing, and then our bassist, Orion, suddenly started changing colours and sweating like a pig. He was pale one minute, and then he was purple the next. We thought it was food poisoning, but visiting the toilet did not help. It was getting worse by the minute. He fainted, and we called an ambulance, but a fire-truck showed up instead. These guys saw the state Orion was in and they took him to the hospital.

  Did you cancel the show?

  We were worried, because we didn’t know what was wrong with him, and it was the most important show of the tour! But we decided we would wait for him. In the meantime, we began preparing to play without him if we had to. We tried calling him every five minutes, but he didn’t answer. We had about an hour to spare. We started painting our faces and biting our nails.

  Fifteen minutes before the show, Orion walked into the dressing room. He didn’t say a word; he just sat down and started applying his makeup. We looked at him quizzically, and all he said was, ‘What’s going on? When do we go onstage?’

  It turned out that he had kidney stones. They wanted to keep him in the hospital, but he said that was out of the question; he had to play the show. There was this huge responsibility for the band in him, too. The doctors gave him a shitload of painkillers. He later told us that they had given him an injection, and a few minutes later he just stood up, like Lazarus, and took a cab to the club.

  We looked at him every now and then during the show, as we weren’t sure if he would make it. It was tough, and he did almost faint a few times.

  We went on to Canada. Orion was popping pills for about two weeks. He was lying down practically all the time, and parties were out of the question. Finally he peed those stones out, and by the time we got back to Poland, he was fine.

  You had been touring Canada for two weeks?

  Longer. We broke all records during the Demigod tour. We played over a hundred and fifty shows in North America—twenty-six of them in Canada. Who would play so much in one country? In December, no less! But we did it. People who came to see us play were astounded, because even Canadian bands didn’t undertake tours like this.

  How did it go?

  Everything was upside down. Orion was suffering, and we were playing shows in places that weren’t even on the map. Sometimes we had to set up the stage ourselves, because there was nobody else in the bar. We even played one show for eight people. There were a few dozen others—mostly local, random people. All we needed was a reindeer, an owl, and a crippled dog. We played in a city that had two streets. Literally. The show took place in an old cinema. We felt that there were no Behemoth fans in front of the stage, and we were seen as a mobile circus.

  Was it similar in the bigger cities?

  It was better. In Montreal, there were over four hundred people. In Toronto, we sold quite a lot of tickets. But bear in mind that in the States we would play for a few thousand people on the same tour, so these numbers seemed rather humble to us. But it was all worth it.

  On the next American tour we played only two shows in Canada as a headliner. Both of them were sold out. There were eight hundred people at one of them and nine hundred at the other. These are rather astronomical figures for Canada. They were also the first shows of this magnitude where we didn’t open for somebody else but were the main act. These people came to see us. Just US. We harvested the crops. That’s how we built our position in the world.

  What does your average concert day look like?

  We’ve talked quite a lot about the good fun, but primarily a tour is a really tough job. Our time onstage is something between forty-five and ninety minutes, but the concert itself, not including the transport, takes a few hours for us. We get onstage about nine in the evening, but we start preparation at about six. I don’t eat after that time, because a heavy meal could turn out to be a redundant dead weight. We try to relax. I like to exercise a bit, stretch out, read a book. I want to feel that I go out onstage prepared.

  A beer before the show, perhaps?

  Almost never. Sometimes, of course, I drink until morning, go to sleep, then take a shower and play the show, but that hardly ever happens. I don’t like to do that becaus
e I consider it a lack of respect for the people who pay to see our show. I want them to get a high-quality product, not a drunken parody. Instead of drinking beer, I stretch and warm up my fingers. That’s especially important when we play a show outdoors. The older I get, the more I have to exercise.

  Interviews?

  It’s worst when we go on tour right after releasing an album. I remember when we played the Mayhem Festival in the States. I didn’t know what was going on. We were to sign the CDs at noon and play the show about four in the afternoon. After the show I just took a quick shower and went for another autograph session. Then I would go to the interviews. I finished these practically at night. I would do twenty-five a day. When I couldn’t make it alone, Orion and Inferno helped me.

  And you said that the gods told you to relax …

  Being a musician is no easy ride. But my life motto is as follows: ‘Find what you love and you will never have to work.’ Playing music is like having a baby. The first years for parents are hard work: you don’t sleep much; you’re constantly tired, but would your father tell you how hard it was? No. Every one of his baby’s moments makes him happy.

  So you make your life your work?

  That’s how I have always approached my life. Now, after the illness, I am even more convinced that that is what our existence is all about. One day, when we were shooting an episode of The Voice Of Poland, one of the contestants came up to me. He wanted to understand how I was functioning after leaving hospital, how the sickness had changed me. I told him that I treated every creative situation I found myself in as fulfilment. Tomorrow I may not be here, but I know I will leave something behind. I sow and observe my crops. My departure will not change anything, because anything I sowed will continue to grow.

  That sounds a bit pompous.

  My albums will continue to exist when my body dies. I can see in my mind this video recording, with Malta as the main actor. Seth, our guitarist, recorded him at one of the parties when I was asleep at that time in another room. But the guys kept drinking. Malta is completely different when he’s drunk. Sometimes I’m even a bit afraid of him. In the movie, he is standing in the middle of the room; he looks like a crazy man. ‘We’re creating hiiiistoooryyyyy!’ he yells.

  It was indeed a bit pompous, but there is undoubtedly something to it. Our crusade, this everlasting journey with the band; it’s not just more money in our pockets, it’s also about creating something bigger than ourselves, something that will outlive us. We’re changing the world a little bit.

  CHAPTER VI

  A DREAM ABOUT WARSAW

  Let’s talk about Dorota.

  That’s a difficult subject. And a complicated one.

  How did you two meet? Did you pick her up or did she pick you up?

  It’s not that simple. Polish show business is a small world. Everybody knows each other. Suddenly I started hearing that Doda keeps asking: who is this Nergal guy?

  How did she know there even was a Nergal?

  She seemingly saw me on Kuba Wojewódzki’s talk show. She told me about that later. Supposedly she was impressed by what I said, and she remembered me.

  Did you even know who she was?

  For me, she was just a girl from those colourful magazines, but without any negative associations. Maybe I was a little intrigued by her. I can’t say I followed her career, but I did watch how it developed from a distance.

  Didn’t you laugh at her a bit?

  Maybe a little. But even if I did, it was all in good fun.

  ‘Poland seen from afar has the face of Doda and the Kaczynski brothers.’

  These are my words. I did say that in an interview. Years ago.

  Yes, while you were criticising Polish music.

  That’s right. But remember, I’d been talking to journalists long before I ever met Dorota. Her stage image and songs were a bit … unleavened at that time. She underwent a huge metamorphosis, and she herself was aware of that.

  Let’s be honest, when I look at pictures of me from years ago, I can’t help but smile, too.

  What did you think when you found out that this girl from magazines wanted to contact you?

  I had two feelings: surprise, but also curiosity. A few days earlier, I read a long interview with Dorota for Pani magazine. This interview, as well as having a beautiful and sensual photo shoot to accompany it, boosted my curiosity. But it didn’t occupy my head entirely.

  And later?

  She just wouldn’t let go. We were at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt with the band. It’s the biggest music fair in Europe. There was some nasty party going on when someone called me—a journalist friend from MTV. He started telling me that he had met Doda and that she kept asking him for my number. ‘If you care about it so much, I will call you first,’ I thought. So I got her number and sent her a text. She wrote me back and the rest is history.

  We met for the first time in Gdańsk. Behemoth was finishing Evangelion at that time. Dorota was from a different world to me, but it only made me want to meet her more. It made the whole situation even spicier. We met in the evening, somewhere around ten, and I drove her back to her hotel around six in the morning. We agreed to meet the next day for dinner in the Przystal bar in Sopot. I slept for maybe six hours. I woke up when my telephone rang. I picked up and heard Dorota say, ‘So, how about that fish?’ She was really disarming.

  So the chemistry was always there?

  Chemistry, and more dates—in London, where we mixed our record, and in Warsaw. And I think that’s when it all started. For the first time in my life, I saw these strange creatures running around with cameras. Paparazzi. Prior to that, I lived in a cocoon. I existed in a metal niche, and I was completely unaware of such people. I knew that the tabloid press existed, of course, but I never dared peek inside that world. I didn’t feel the need to do so, either. But I had no idea there was this whole other world of gutter internet journalism.

  It was a shock: I’m on a date with a girl, and now there are people with cameras, secretly taking pictures of us. I never suspected Dorota of selling us out to the paparazzi. But there are always doubts. Now, from experience, I know that if you really want to, it can be done. But why would I speculate now? It doesn’t matter anymore.

  How did you feel as a new inhabitant of this world of gossip?

  I certainly didn’t know it would all end in such a storm. I did realise that if they took pictures of us, they would publish them somewhere, but I never assumed that the whole country would make such a big deal out of it. What actually happened later was way too much for me. I called a few friends and the guys from the band and I warned them that some things that could potentially appear in the press and other media might surprise them.

  Did they already know about your dates with Doda? How did they react?

  I don’t normally feel the need to ask my friends for permission when I want to meet a girl. But it was funny. The shortest conversation I had was with Paldzioch, our second guitarist. He just said, ‘Bullshit, I don’t believe you,’ and hung up the phone. I shrugged and kept calling people. Orion was speechless for a moment, then he just uttered an old and beautiful Polish word, ‘kurwa’.

  Finally, I called Zbyszek. He listened to me—didn’t interrupt—and when I had finished, he said, ‘Fucking awesome, man, such positive stuff!’ I really didn’t feel any negative emotions from them. It wasn’t shocking for them that pictures of me might show up in glossy magazines. The fact that I was dating Doda was, though.

  Did you have the impression that everyone was looking at you the next day?

  No. I was used to people recognising me in the street because I am a performing artist. The context was different but the rules were the same.

  Your pictures were everywhere.

  That’s life.

  How many photo shoots were set up?

  None. I never got so low as to set up photo shoots. I’ve heard that it’s a quite popular thing to do among various stars and starlets, but I find it repuls
ive. I’m not looking for fame at all costs. Paparazzi, stalkers, impudent fans, tabloids—these are the tax that you pay because you’re famous. And I could afford it.

  Weren’t there any staged shoots at parties?

  That’s a different story. Self-promotion and taking pictures is a part of those events. In that situation—if they have to, you let them shoot. In other situations, we always ran away. I actually get the impression that this environment is evolving, and not necessarily in a good way. At the very beginning, when I had no clue how it all worked, I met a few paparazzi. They were ordinary guys and sometimes we even exchanged a few words. But I never felt quite right in their presence. After all, if you decide to take on a job that involves stalking other people, there has to be something pathological in you. A normal person doesn’t become a paparazzo, just like they don’t become a dogcatcher.

  Or a black metal musician.

  True.

  So how did this pathological black metal guy interact with pathological paparazzi?

  One of them seemed quite normal. He would say hi and ask about my health when I left the house to buy toilet paper and cucumbers. He wasn’t too rude, either. He was just trying to observe a basic level of decency.

  One day, I was leaving a bar with Dorota, and he was there, waiting. We were walking, without a car; there was no way to run. He took our pictures, but he was kind enough to offer us a ride. He drove us all the way home, and it turned out that he was an old metal fan. Suddenly he pointed at me and said to Dorota, ‘Woman, do you know that this guy has toured with Slayer?’ And she said, ‘What’s Slayer?’

  It wasn’t staged, then?

  No. It was just a one-off situation. These people were changing—for the worst. The more we tried to avoid them, the more they tried to take pictures of us. At first the escapes were quite easy, because most of them drove old, shabby cars. When one couldn’t catch us, there was another in his place—in a black BMW, for example. They looked like mafia. They always attacked as a group, never alone. There were always three or four of them. One got out of the car with the camera while another waited nearby. They’d expect me to attack the first one or wait for me and Dorota to go the other way. Two more would wait in the car, in case we tried to escape.