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

by Adam Nergal Darski

  I still see them walking happily off the stage. I cried with laughter. The cameras didn’t get that but it was beautiful: a crazy blonde with ADHD in the front; a long-haired, fire-breathing Salapa right behind her; then we had pregnant Monika; then we see Ukeje looking like the guy from The A-Team; and at the very end of the line there was Ares, looking like an Orthodox priest. All we needed was a parrot, a midget, and a wooden leg! Each of them had a lot to offer as individuals, but I saw a team that would perfectly fit in a movie, for example.

  Is Damian going to make it? Will anyone even remember him in five years?

  I absolutely believe so. I will try to help him. We got to know each other; we even started working on some music together. I’ve got my career and he’s got his but we have serious plans for a music project. At the moment we are recording some demo tapes. They sound genuinely rock, very classic: a bit of AC/DC, a bit of blues, some elements of Alice In Chains. We let the music flow and develop, not necessarily in the direction we planned at the beginning.

  Do you think a TV show like this can produce a real artist?

  What do you mean by a ‘real artist’?

  OK: let’s take David Bowie and DJ Bobo. One of them is an artist—the other is not.

  From this kind of show you can get plastic dolls that give the common people some cheap entertainment. That’s obvious. But nobody said that a TV show couldn’t create someone who can beat the circus and have a strong personality that dictates its own terms.

  Do you know any such artists?

  I don’t have to search that far. Polish Idol gave us Ania Dabrowska. Her debut album showed us that she is not going to bow before anyone. She did some ambitious—and I stress that—ambitious pop. She was appreciated by critics and by the people. The second album was even better, and Ania showed to everybody that she is an aware and independent artist.

  Another example is Monika Brodka—very nice girl. I went to her concert and we met. She’s very young and very mature as an artist. It’s a beautiful combination. She literally shined on her single, ‘Granda’, even though a lot of prophets said she would burn out.

  Doesn’t taking shortcuts, like going through a TV talent show, kill determination?

  A lot of talented people can’t take such a leap. They quickly flare up and burn out. Fame, just like fear, has short legs. I’ve been climbing my mountain for years.

  In most cases that’s how it looks. But you can’t generalise. Ania and Monika made it, but there are people who had some quality in the programme, but when they left it, they became blank and featureless. Szymon Wydra, for example.

  Do you know him?

  No. I have nothing against him, either, but his music is as blank as a piece of paper. People who buy records like this should go to jail.

  There’s one more type, represented by people like Gienek Loska. This guy has spent his whole life in music. He played, and he still plays, on the street. The programme gave him a boost, he released an album, but nothing changed: he still plays on the street for money, and he’s still the same guy. The only difference is that now he plays for three hundred people, not thirty, as before.

  Apart from Damian, who else from The Voice is going to make it?

  I’m counting on Filip Salapa. He’s a talented guy, very ambitious, and a nice growler, too. He didn’t have to win the show because he’s got his band, and he’s invested in grassroots work. He fights for success, and I believe he will go far.

  Do you know any young and talented people who didn’t take the shortcut?

  You mean Polish metal bands?

  For example, yes …

  Blindead is great, but can I describe them as young and talented? They’re a recognised band, and they’ve created their own brand. But I think they deserve more. I follow the underground all the time. I’ll tell you more: bands of my youth, all these metal gods, don’t really give me as much excitement as they used to. That’s why I’m looking down: I’m searching for exciting things deeper, where music is accompanied by freshness and a lack of compromise. I can openly admit that I’m still inspired by absolute stylistic caves and sonic rubble, bands that release a thousand copies of their record. I meet these people and help them. I keep one foot in the underground at all times. And I go on air in a Watain T-shirt …

  Some people would consider Watain to be mainstream!

  And some people like onion ice cream. We’re going back to what we discussed before: there are people who don’t see the difference between being popular and being a sell-out.

  What position do you see Behemoth occupying nowadays?

  For years, I didn’t realise how the band was growing. Only after time did I notice that we’ve climbed pretty high. It’s an eight-thousand-metre climb—like the fourteen highest mountains in the world. In our league, of course—because Behemoth was, is, and always will be an extreme band—we can go only so high. But we can always rise another few hundred metres.

  Can you see other climbers ahead of you?

  No, because we’re almost at the top. Of course, there are a few eight-thousand-metre peaks to climb, and there are climbers on them, too. On ours, though, I can feel the breath of the young and talented on my back. There are also bands that are neck and neck with us.

  Like who?

  I think there are quite a few. I can name a few names, but I’m sure I’ll omit a lot of them: we are in the same league as Nile, Gojira, Electric Wizard, or the aforementioned Watain.

  Of course, I’m not talking about the pioneers and bands that are already on top, although I’m not really sure if it’s the same top as ours. That’s the problem I have with Mastodon—is that still extreme metal? But they certainly are perfect.

  Your participation in The Voice didn’t weaken the band’s position, then?

  No way.

  You became recognisable outside of your niche. Aren’t you inclined to tone down the sound of Behemoth and start playing music that’s more digestible?

  No, because I don’t want to entertain people with my records. I want to entertain myself; I’m an artistic egoist.

  So how about another TV show?

  I never say never, but I don’t think so. The experiment went well. Why would I go back and do the same thing? I would probably win again. Now I choose what’s most important: the band. We’ll finish a tour and get involved in a new album. Then we’ll promote it, release it, and go touring for a year or two.

  My life slowly begins to revolve around a new album. I’ve got ideas for songs ready and they sound … different, but painfully honest.

  Do you want to climb another few hundred metres to the top with your new records?

  We’ve worked with the best people available on the market. Ted Jensen, who normally works with Madonna or Metallica, mastered our last album. Colin Richardson, who produced Evangelion, is the number-one guy in metal when it comes to switches and buttons in the studio. Only Rick Rubin and Bob Rock are higher.

  Do you have their phone numbers already?

  I’m working on it, but I’m rather looking in another direction, where I see people like Steve Albini, Andy Wallace, Ross Robinson, Matt Hyde … someone who could give us more unpredictability and let us escape stiff solutions. I dream about asymmetry and added dirt—all within reasonable limits of course. After all, we play music that’s a bit complicated and aggressive so there has to be some selectivity in it. Steve Albini produced a few Neurosis records, and Robinson is responsible for the great sound of Slipknot’s Iowa. It’s not a simple equation, though, and it’s not a matter of going with the same settings on the console and the sound will be similar. Some people advise me to play safe, but I don’t want that. I want risk. That’s what my intuition tells me.

  You talk about risk, but there have long been accusations that you put into your music what’s trendy at any given moment.

  I’ve been hearing this for years. We supposedly abandoned black metal to play death metal, then we somehow turned into some kind of ‘religious
’ black metal … but what the hell is ‘religious’ black metal? Funeral Mist? We don’t sound like Funeral Mist. We’ve never sounded like Cannibal Corpse or Suffocation either, and they are pure death metal.

  Maybe something like Morbid Angel?

  That’s a timeless inspiration. Their music is in my genes. You can see the similarities. But we never were and never will be their copy.

  Are you original at all?

  I hate that word; it’s not in my dictionary. The guitar has twenty-four frets and six strings, sometimes seven. All sounds have already been played many years ago. You just can’t make any new ones; everything’s been played. We can play music but we can’t play anything revelatory. I focus on emotions, on honest messages. My friends from God Forbid once admitted to Dimebag that they’re actually playing his riffs, and he said, ‘Listen, we don’t steal riffs from each other, we just borrow them, bro.’ He was a guy who really created something in metal; he’s a real guitar hero.

  Did you steal the main riff to ‘Conquer All’ from Anthrax? Or did you just borrow it?

  I went up to them after one of their shows, introduced myself, and told them that I thought I had accidentally covered their song. They burst out laughing; they knew exactly which Behemoth song I meant.

  How was it possible that a riff almost identical to the one from ‘Be All End All’ could appear in one of your songs?

  I remember the day when I played that riff for the first time. It’s not identical but it is very similar. I started writing ‘Conquer All’ with the solo, and then we wrote the rest of the music to fit the solo.

  I played the solo to the guys in a rehearsal and told them, ‘Guys, it’s got to be here!’ I started humming: Ta dam … ta da da da da dam. I found these sounds on the fret board; they joined in, and we felt horrific power. The music carried us away. I knew that the riff of all riffs was just about to be created.

  Suddenly, Zbyszek said, ‘Ner, I think I’ve heard this before.’

  I just muttered, ‘I don’t give a shit! The song doesn’t exist without that riff!’ And it stayed that way.

  How did you find out that somebody had played that riff before?

  I didn’t want to hear it, but a lot of people told me that ‘Conquer All’ sounded like Anthrax. When I was twelve or thirteen years old, I loved State Of Euphoria, so maybe it was coded in my subconscious? But I didn’t want to listen to that record, because I felt that our song might be a little bit of a plagiarism.

  It was only on tour when somebody played that song to me, without warning. I couldn’t run. Besides, I remembered a similar story …

  What story?

  In one of early Behemoth’s songs, I subconsciously smuggled a fragment of Goblin’s music that they had composed for the movie Suspiria, directed by Dario Argento. His surreal images of horror are cult objects for many people.

  As a child, I would sit with my friends by the bonfire. Someone once told us what Suspiria was about and hummed the theme tune from the movie. I was terrified. This melody must have rooted deeply in my mind. I won’t tell you what song the melody was from. Let Behemoth fans watch the movie and find it themselves. And to all those who don’t like our music—I recommend the movie.

  So what about your originality generally? You often say that Behemoth has its own character.

  I’m like a sponge. I absorb everything that surrounds me. Music, film, conversation; when you squeeze a sponge, the water that squirts out of it is not the same as the water that was absorbed. You filter everything through your experience. Recognition? I’m all for that! Own character? That too. But it doesn’t have to mean complete originality. I’d prefer to be secondary but still honest.

  There was a band called Aspergillus Flavus in Gdańsk. These guys were obsessed with trying to be original. When someone told them, ‘Guys, this sounds like Voivod,’ they just threw the song away. They never released an album; they played a few concerts. It was just unlistenable.

  Why do you still paint your faces before going onstage? You’ve resigned from a lot of things, but not from that. Isn’t it childish?

  Is makeup a privilege of children? I don’t think so. Alice Cooper, Kiss, and Celtic Frost still paint their faces for their shows, and they’re not neophytes. I don’t know where the suggestion that mature artists should not use any additional eccentric gadgets, like costumes or paint, comes from. My opinion on that is exactly the opposite: every artist has the right to do anything if it is to help him achieve his artistic goal and manifest his own vision.

  Of course, our corpse paint has its roots in the aesthetics that have accompanied black metal since the very beginning. The pioneers of the genre used paint and military images on their bodies. We continued the tradition, but we added a lot of our own elements to it. Today, Behemoth looks like … Behemoth. Besides, it’s not just about aesthetics. Painting faces has a broader sense for us. It’s like alchemy. Makeup transforms us, introduces us into a new role, functioning in another space: the stage.

  I often describe the stage as the battleground. We go to war and we paint our faces. It’s obvious.

  But people judge you by this theatre.

  ‘How do you know how an apple tastes, if you’re only looking at the tree? How do you know how honey tastes if you only watch the bees? Don’t judge me, because I may look like a hillbilly, but I’m a badass motherfucker.’

  That’s from a song by Maciej Malenczuk, isn’t it?

  Exactly.

  He likes to dress up, too. How did your paths cross?

  I used to watch Idol on TV. In one of the episodes, Maciej was wearing Behemoth’s Zos Kia Cultus T-shirt. I didn’t peg him as a fan of this kind of music, but the main theme of this T-shirt design was Baphomet, an occult deity. At that time, Maciej was playing Woland in a play based on The Master And Margarita. I deduced that the T-shirt—designed by a friend of ours, and a great artist, Tomasz Danilowicz—fitted his image back then. Anyway, the seed has been sown, and I … got interested in his band, Homo Twist.

  You didn’t know them previously?

  I knew the name and a few songs … I’d heard the Demonologic album, and then I gave up. A few years passed, and then I spontaneously created the song ‘Lucifer’ to accompany Tadeusz Micinski’s poem. Right before going into the studio, I immediately thought about Maciej. I heard in my head how he recites fragments of the lyrics. I called his manager and made an offer. Five minutes later, he called me back and told me that Maciej would love to take part in the project. ‘How much?’ I asked, and what I heard in the receiver was, ‘For free, of course, it’s an honour for him.’

  Did he come to the studio?

  No. He had only an hour for the recording in his rehearsal room, because he was about to leave for a longer tour. My friend Kikut was supposed to send the music to him. Kikut has his own studio, and he’s good at all these switches and buttons. So I’m waiting impatiently for the recording when suddenly Maciej’s sound engineer calls me and says that the recording is going rather slowly because the track they have is … strange.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ I asked. As it turned out, Kikut somehow sent them only the tracks with the kick and the French horn in the background. In short, there was NOTHING! No guitars, no bass, no drums … I was furious.

  Fortunately, Maciej also got the metronome track to which we recorded the whole song, so he sang the vocals to that. We had to edit them a little bit, but ultimately everything was perfect. ‘Lucifer’ is one of the moments on Evangelion that gives me goose bumps.

  We can also see Maciej Malenczuk—singer in Pudelsi and Homo Twist—in the video to the song.

  It was a natural development of our co-operation. I invited him to the set, he said yes … and I didn’t tell the guys. Imagine their faces when we’re standing there with this beautiful lady with a camera, and she’s interviewing us for Eska TV. And then this black Subaru drives into the yard where we shot the clip. The car stops, and Malenki steps out …

  You sang
on his album, the one you mentioned before. Was this a return of the favour?

  A few months after shooting the video, I met Maciej at the X-Factor finals. Kuba Wojewódzki announced his band and their guest: the singer Gienek Loska. He also mentioned that Adam Nergal Darski was present in the studio, and that he would surely appreciate the performance. And they did indeed play great.

  In the dressing room, Maciej shared his idea of recording a country album and invited me to do it with him. I thought for a long time about the idea. I like that sound. I’d been listening to Johnny Cash for years, and I also liked younger artists like Steve Von Till, Bjorn Berge, Wino and Conny Ochs, or Jeff Martin of The Tea Party. The form might be simple—guitar and voice—but this music is very close to my nature. The reflective and calm one, I mean.

  I had an epiphany while jogging. I was listening to Highwayman—the original version—and then … eureka! Everything was clear. I got home, picked up the phone, and called Maciej to tell him about my vision. You can hear the effect on the album. I’m proud, because this song is close to my heart and my life story. There was supposed to be a video to this song, but there won’t be.

  Problems with the schedule?

  It’s hard to say. We’d been discussing the video since the beginning. When I mentioned the idea for the song, I also said something about my vision for an accompanying video. It could have been a video that everyone would talk about. Everything was going smoothly, up to a certain moment. I was driving to the set when I got a phone call to say that Maciej had called everything off. Why? I don’t know; I didn’t even manage to talk to him directly about it. The only thing I know is that I was very disappointed with him. It’s too bad—we could have done something really special.

  And how did you get to work with jazz pianist Leszek Mozdzer? That guy is from a different planet.

  We bumped into each other at the Radio Gdańsk studio. We were recording The Apostasy at that time, and he was doing some of his stuff. He knew Behemoth existed, and I knew who Leszek Mozdzer was. It was all very nice. We were from two different worlds but we spoke the same language.