|
Lolk [editor of Antenna Magazine] and I met up with Behemoth guitarist/vocalist Nergal when the band played at Aarhus Metal Festival on the 3rd of June. Nergal turned out to be a very talkative and cheerful guy. Our conversation went on for almost 40 minutes, but due to the very noisy surroundings and various interferences a lot of our talk was impossible to transcribe. I didn't really realize this until I sat down and began listening to the tape, but nevertheless I managed to recover the most interesting parts of the conversation.
It's the first time you're playing here, so any expectations?
We're pretty excited about the show because it's our first show here. From now on, I hope we can come back here every year we have a new album out. This is the first time ever that Behemoth plays in Denmark. We have friends here, like the guys from Exmortem, among others. It's cool here. It looks like a friendly atmosphere and people appear to be very open-minded, and you have extreme stuff like Dissection and Behemoth on the festival, as well as Volbeat which I truly enjoyed hearing. That's the kind of music I enjoy hearing myself, so it was killer. From us you can expect a high quality show, but let's see what people say.
There are two funny things in this. First this is Aarhus, and not Copenhagen the capital, and Poland is actually quite close to Denmark, and yet it's the first time you play here.
It's funny. We've tried for years to put up a show here, but we always get the same answer that there's very few people coming to the shows, and that Behemoth is not big enough to attract large crowds, and we thought; 'okay, the time will come', and the time finally came, and we're happy to be here.
Also because Dissection is here?
Oh, yeah. I've always been a huge fan of Dissection, and it's actually the first time that I get to see them. They are a legend, a cult band. So I'm happy that they are back together again. It's an honour, I'm the show is great, but with Dissection on the bill it's perfect speaking from my personal taste.
And you also liked Volbeat?
Yeah, I've already asked for the CD, but I was told it wasn't coming out until August.
The frontman Michael Poulsen is very fond of American rockabilly.
I could see that. I could see his inspiration from Social Distortion which I also like a lot. They looked good.
I expected you to be someone who only liked Swedish death metal and…
I don't like Swedish death metal at all.
Except from Dissection?
Dissection is gifted and other Swedish bands who stand above any Swedish metal music. There are bands like Luciferion and Dissection that stand out. They stand above all this Swedish same sounding, boring death metal that I don't like. The metal scene in Denmark is way more, I mean it's not bigger of course, but you have bands like Illdisposed, Exmortem and all the old bands like for instance Invocator. I know this scene a bit. I think it's varied, it's different and it's always quality music that is made here so you can be proud of it.
For the first time Danish metal is actually becoming bigger. Danish metal has always been the small one, but it's really growing at the moment.
That's great. I think you can actually compare Denmark to Poland. Poland has always been sort of unknown territory. Everybody knew Vader, but nothing else. We've always had a really strong metal scene. There's not much heavy metal but lots of good death metal bands in Poland. I won't even start mentioning them because there's a least 20 I had to mention. First there were Vader, and it just began to grow bigger, and I think Denmark is quite similar. Everybody knew Invocator back in the day, and now there's HateSphere and Illdisposed, and it just grows bigger. I do see similarities.
You recently toured with Nile and King Diamond in the US. How was that?
It was really good. 500-1200 people every night, and just be a part of this tour was really good. We were the opening band, so there wasn't always that big a crowd, but all in all it was really good because we got so much recognition after this tour. It was an incredible tour package.
Are you going to tour Europe this year?
Yeah, again. We're coming to Denmark again later on. We are doing a co-headlining tour with Hate Eternal and Blood Red Throne. We doing 44 shows in Europe this fall, and then we're flying back to the US to do another round, so we're going to be busy.
So is it a dream come true touring with Nile?
We've toured with Nile before, but King Diamond was fucking awesome. Us being a middle size band, and him being a fucking legend. It was great. I grew up listening to King Diamond. These guys turned out to be really, really cool guys. It's a funny coincidence that the guy [Peter] who is doing the lights today is the same guy who did lights for King Diamond. Peter is a really killer dude.
When you started Behemoth the Polish metal scene was in the Middle Ages metaphorically speaking, but the Polish scene is quite famous now as opposite to in the early days.
We're just lucky we got a bit more recognition. I wouldn't call it famous. Chopin is famous, but yeah, there's a bit more recognition. People just know we're Behemoth, but some people don't. Like when we go to the US lots of people think we're from Sweden, but still people can get it to match when we say that we're from Poland and Vader is from Poland.
The Polish sound is very distinct and unique!
Yeah, we got our sound. I mean the Polish sound is the Polish sound, but I wouldn't really say that Behemoth has a Polish sound.
So what sound do you have?
A Behemoth sound. I mean if you listen to a band like Slayer you know it's Slayer, or when you think of Metallica or Morbid Angel, you never think of Morbid Angel being Florida death metal anymore, because they grew and evolved. They are so much more than Florida death metal nowadays. That's also what I think of our band. With the experience and the way we have evolved, we just pretty much stand out from other Polish bands. I don't want to have people saying that Behemoth is a good Polish band. I'd like to think that we are a part of the worldwide extreme metal scene, and I hope people think that we deliver good and quality music. That's how I'd like people to think of us, but I guess it's all good as long as they talk positive or negative about us - it's all good.
You have obviously become quite rich now from playing music!
Mentally yes [laughs].
But at least you have free beer!
Yes, with the free beer we get we have every opportunity to get seriously drunk and alcohol addicted [laughs] but we're not. We are cool, and we are pretty fuckers trying to be as professional as we can be. Not to exaggerate in any way, but just to be cool and happy fuckers, and of course to have our beer too. It's all work. The band is our life, our work, our hobby. It's everything. I know bands that are like dying on tour and am like: 'fuck, I want to go back home, I want to watch my TV, I want to fuck my girlfriend'. Fuck it, I love being here and talk to you guys, have beer with the fans after the show. It's the best job ever. There's no better job than being a musician. I just think we should tour more and more. I mean we pretty much go anywhere where people demand us, and where they love our music. We just came back from Guatemala. I mean there's no reason to play Guatemala besides the people, because the country sucks. Because you get little money and there's chaos and no professionalism at all. The only reason to be there is the people. The show was shitty, it was just chaos, but still how can I not be happy seeing all these kids being happy? The Behemoth show might be the only entertainment they get in six months or something, and they know it. But if you for instance tour Germany, they just look at you, stand there, get fat, eat and drink because they have so many shows there. I love going to the places where people really appreciate it. It may not be the best venue, the best stage, but Behemoth is not everything. In most cases it's about people.
It occurs as if you're touring most of the year so do you have any job besides playing music?
No.
So you live of the music?
We have to. We just did 150 shows. Imagine doing a show every second day and having a regular job. You'd be out, you'd be fired. We had to choose between the band and having a regular job, and as I said before, there's no better job in the world than being a musician, at least I feel that way. I wouldn't do anything else in my life.
You talked about the youngster in Guatemala is that because Poland is quite and was poor and you can relate?
No, I don't think of it that way. Poland is not that poor anymore. We cannot allow ourselves to be poor otherwise we would be eaten up by the other countries. We had to get strong, stay strong and make our own way to a better world by entering the European Union, by growing, getting bigger and better. Getting more established economic-wise. It's not easy but I can se there's a huge progression in Poland, in the Polish market, in Polish economy, and I think we're doing fine. We're doing better and better. It's not easy of course being a new European Union country because the prizes are increasing in a high tempo and the salaries haven't really increased as much as the prizes on food, houses, flats and so on, but we're definitely developing. I can see that when I've been gone for weeks and come back to Poland and my hometown Gdansk and I say: 'wauh, I didn't see that building before'. It's definitely getting better. It used to be difficult in Poland like in the 70's, 80's, and of course earlier when we had this communistic regime it wasn't easy to make a living out of the salaries we got because it was a communistic system. It was a fucked up system.
Unfortunately the tape ran out without anyone noticing it so I didn't realize that the last couple of minutes was missing until we left the room which was a shame because Nergal had a very and quite interesting and partly opposite view on underground and more commercial music like for instance Metallica.
|
