BEHEMOTH

(Un)Holy Fucking Shit!
by Mike Baronas

Who is the most ferocious band currently roaming the planet? Behemoth is, hands down. Never had I been so impressed with a metal performance in the last decade then when I saw them a few years back opening for Morbid Angel – my jaw hanging open, the whole nine yards. In fact, I believe the title of this article was (almost) my exact quote when asked what I thought of them after witnessing their first tune live.

Now the Polish demons are decimating the US on their “Radio Rebellion” tour in support of The Apostasy, an album that has done the impossible by surpassing their last masterpiece Demigod.

Behemoth is the real deal. Don’t believe me? Read my chat with vocalist/guitarist Nergal below...

GASPetc: My first memory of Behemoth is seeing you guys live. I don’t typically enjoy bands that I didn’t discover as a teenager back in the `80’s, but I have to say you’re second only to Slayer for the most vicious show I’ve ever seen in my life.

Nergal: Wow man, you know that’s very flattering. I mean I have to say that I’m a huge Slayer fan. Although we play different music, I’ve heard these comparisons already and I love them. What can I say? We do our best to put on the best show we can. When it comes to this band we pay attention to the tightness, to the way we play and then everything else. The Behemoth performance is super important to us. You’ll never see us being boring onstage, you know, being completely focused only on our guitar work or our drum work, you know what I mean? You’ll see us running around the stage and just going completely chaotic and crazy, just doing all this crazy shit.

We’re doing some extra things on this tour that we’re finally bringing to the U.S. It’s the most complete show that we’re doing here, so I’m definitely excited seeing the kids every night. So far they’ve seen us open for other bands and the longest set was like 45 minutes, so we got kind of bored. We were only doing like 7 or 8 songs. On this tour we’re doing like 12 songs plus encores, so people seem happy and satisfied with it. Thank you so much for complimenting that.

GASPetc: Of course. I mean, literally, I was amazed. It had been such a long time since I was impressed with seeing a new band. Well, new to me anyway.

Nergal: And it’s very cool because we’ve been around 16 years and for me hearing such things, it’s very refreshing. Because just imagine, we’ve put out 8 records in 16 years. We may get the impression that we’ve played everywhere and played in front of everyone so people are already getting bored with us. Then there are people like you and every night I meet kids coming out to see Job For A Cowboy (co-headliners on the “Radio Rebellion” tour) and they approach us after the show and say, “Hey, you just made me a new fan,” and that’s awesome, man. That’s probably the thing that will keep this band alive. They give us a boost to keep us going. They give us the motivation not to give up, to improve, and to try to be better and better, so that’s awesome.

GASPetc: You mentioned some extras on this tour...

Nergal: We brought the strobe lights back, we’ve got some new armor, and we have big metal silver eagle carvings on stage. We’ve got two huge neon crosses on stage and it looks fucking incredible. And we use blood onstage too. We do some crazy shit here. I’m using my mask from The Apostasy cover, so it’s a very complete show I have to say.

GASPetc: Tell me about your stage outfits. I mean, you guys look like Cenobites from Hellraiser.

Nergal: [Laughs] For The Apostasy CD we changed our costumes. I want to keep it so on every record there’s some difference, because every record has a different approach so the whole image has to follow. So what’s happening here is that we got new costumes that are a bit more, I have to say, Roman or a Spartans thing. It looks more militant and less Hellraiser. More like Asian armor or that kind of stuff. They were custom made by a friend who used to work for us back on our first tours in the U.S. He’s been a dear friend of ours and just brought me a new costume a few days ago and I’m really happy with it. It’s killer!

GASPetc: Okay, so after all the tours you’ve done here, I’ve wondered how close you are to having drunk all our alcohol and fucked all our women?

Nergal: [Laughs] It’s more of a joke, but then, hey, I think it’s less of a joke because we still keep fucking and we keep up the rock & roll spirit. We can be good boys. We can just chill out and watch a movie and just be fucking metal and boring, but then the next moment we’re going to raise hell again, you know what I mean? So we try to keep life balanced. When there’s a mood, a demand for partying and nice looking women around, it does give you a boost and keeps you entertained.

GASPetc: Ahhh, life on the road...

Nergal: Yeah, it is awesome. You just got to be smart how you use it. You don’t want this shit to be kicking your ass for a year. You always got to be up with it. They are all tools to be used that were made by humans, for humans, so we do it in a very smart way. But we’ve got rules; we never do or drink anything before the shows. We’re always sober onstage. I workout everyday. We all pretty much do long warm ups and are working out everyday in order to do the best show we can. But then after the shows, it’s pretty much whatever.

GASPetc: That’s certainly obvious. I mean, you guys are such solid musicians, lyricists and performers and it really shows through on stage.

Nergal: Yeah, I think it’s very important too. Some bands don’t care. They just go crazy and they don’t think about the consequences. But I know it’s important for me to get decent sleep. If I don’t get enough sleep, I’m the worst person to be around. So I need my sleep, I need my warm up, I need my exercise and I need some healthy food. I pretty much don’t eat any fast food. I don’t eat pizza, no coke, nothing. Just healthy food. The only thing I have is my whiskey after the show. So, as I said, it has to be balanced. If I couldn’t keep that balance, it would be much worse. I try to be as healthy as possible so I can put on the best show I can.

It’s all about the respect that I have for the people that come to the shows and buy our tickets, because they pay our bills. These are the people that keep us motivated. They give us motivation to go on and I don’t want to fail them. It’s all about respect. That’s why you’ll always see us, almost every night, in the crowd after the show talking to those kids. Drinking with them, you know, just socializing with them. Signing their shit you know. That’s my thing. Not many bands do this these days. We’re worn out and exhausted and fucking tired after a show, but I think it’s always worth it to go out for at least a few minutes to talk to these people and hear their opinions. What they thought of the show and of the new record is very important to me.

GASPetc: I totally agree. I mean I’m a 37 year old father of two, not an 18 year old kid anymore, and I waited on line the last time you guys played here to meet you.

Nergal: Awesome! That’s actually what still makes you still a kid, not an old, tired boring man. This music hits the teenage spirit in people. That’s what I’ve found. I’m 30 now and I consider myself a kid. I’m living my dream. Not very much has changed since I was 20. I pretty much do the same thing, I just do it better. I do it on a bigger scale. That’s the only difference. Besides that, I’m the same person.

GASPetc: How wide a demographic age range do you see at your shows typically?

Nergal: It seems it’s younger and younger kids coming to the show. We just did this tour of Poland and Europe, and especially in Poland I saw these fucking 14, 15 year old kids coming to the shows. I was like, “What the fuck?!” It’s a great change of pace because it’s like a whole new generation actually coming into the scene right now and it’s very refreshing. These are people that are probably going to stick with us, at least, hopefully, a majority of them. Some will leave the scene because there’s a lot of seasoned kids, but I believe that many of them will be our die hard fans for the next decade. That’s why it’s important to educate them, show them it’s awesome. Especially on this tour, it seems that – maybe it’s too big of a word for what it really is – but I think it’s some kind of renaissance of extreme metal. And Behemoth and several other bands get so much recognition and support from media and magazines and even TV and that, of course, is how the kids discover us.

GASPetc: I’m sure here in the States a lot of the young kids will remember you from last summer’s Ozzfest. Can you tell me how that tour went for you?

Nergal: It was awesome, man, it was awesome. It was long and it was fucking extremely hard. We were coming out in full armor everyday at 4pm.

GASPetc: I can’t imagine seeing you guys in daylight.

Nergal: You know, it’s all worth it. That’s who we are. I didn’t want to go on Ozzfest because we were playing and doing daylight and because it’s like a mainstream crowd. There were not many Behemoth fans so we were told we should compromise and look more normal and acceptable. We were like, “Fuck you!” We would never do that. We were going to be uglier and even fucking more disturbing and disgusting than ever. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to fucking scare the shit out of people. So for us it was like, we have nothing to lose to be honest. We’re going to be ourselves. We’re going to put on the best show we can. We got like 30 minutes everyday and we’re going to make the best use of it. It seems like it really worked and the kids really dig it and it was awesome. We also got lots of exposure. We made lots of friends along the way and it was definitely worth it and it’s paying off. Now we’re on this “Radio Rebellion” tour and many of these people are coming down after seeing Ozzfest. We definitely gained some fans there.

GASPetc: I want to chat a little bit about The Apostasy. Do you consider it your best work thus far?

Nergal: Well, it would be weird if I said it isn’t. Every new record is always the best one. It’s such a cliché. It’s even weird to say that, because it so obvious.

GASPetc: Have you had many criticisms?

Nergal: You always do. Every record we put out I hear criticism. But I was surprised at the overwhelming feedback we got on this one, and I have to tell you it was received way better than I expected it to be received.

GASPetc: There are so many different elements within it. A song like “Inner Sanctum” for example is so potent on so many different levels. I love the direction you guys are going in.

Nergal: Yeah, this album is just more diverse and there are more things going on there and apparently people love it. The people love the fact that we didn’t really slow it down. We like extremely powerful and fucking full-on extreme hyper-blast metal and it’s probably the most extreme album we’ve put out so far, and at the same time the most musical, the most challenging and the most demanding. Some people have even said it’s also quite a progressive record. I understand that it’s not very easy to get into. Demigod was probably a bit easier to get into. This new one is more technical and more challenging as I said, but Behemoth has never put out like the same record and that’s what I consider one of the biggest values of this band; that we always come up with stuff that, at least when it comes to this band, is new and refreshing.

GASPetc: Well, you don’t really have much choice in slowing down with a drummer like Inferno.

Nergal: [Laughs] No, we have to make use of it. When you got a drummer like him you got to fucking be one of the fastest bands ever.

GASPetc: What drives Behemoth? What is your mission?

Nergal: I was talking to this guy from Kataklysm a few days ago and I said, “Kataklysm has way more groves in the music than Behemoth,” and he was like, “Yeah, I know, but you guys are like the stuff of driven extreme metal.” When people ask me what drives the band, I always say, this music has big balls. When we go onstage we have this adrenaline going and there’s something magic that happens onstage. It’s very difficult to explain it. I really can’t contribute it to this or that. It’s something that’s happening, and there’s a special vibe that keeps us going; that keeps us excited every time we go onstage every night. I think it’s very unique. We’re very passionate about what we do and I think it comes from balls.

GASPetc: Since I know the band take up the majority of your life, what type of ideas do you have for the future?

Nergal: We’re coming out with a new EP and new DVD next year and, actually, I’d bet that around next summer we’ll actually be jamming out new songs. So we got plenty of ideas and we’ve already got killer touring offers. I’m not going to reveal them yet, but it’s soon to become firm. You’ll be hearing from us. We’ve got really big things to come. We should be coming back to the U.S. around early spring next year on some fucking really big extreme metal deal. Keep your eyes open, you’ll see it soon. There’s going to be lots of exciting things happening. I’m glad I have some time off around January to fly to Egypt and take some time off to relax, get myself together and to get more focused and stuff. But there are great things ahead of us and we’ll be coming back with some killer stuff soon.

                                 Mike with Nergal: 2007 Metal and Hardcore Festival, The Palladium, Worcester, MA