BEHEMOTH Frontman: 'Achieving Our Artistic Vision Is Our Highest Priority'

Simon Milburn of Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with vocalist/guitarist Adam "Nergal" Darski of Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH. A few excertps from the chat follow below.

On how the band's ninth studio album, "Evangelion", has been received:

"I'm extremely happy. To be honest, I couldn't be happier. This is our most successful record already. Sales-wise, it's already fucking topping 'Apostasy' and this has been out for three years, right? And the new one, is like four or five weeks only. The feedback from both media and fans has been nothing but great. It's been awesome. We've fucking storming the charts in Europe, we've dominated some of the polls in some of the biggest magazines. We're like number one in Metal Hammer, in Kerrang!, and some other big magazines… so it's amazing. It's going better than I expected and we just finished the tour with DEVILDRIVER which turned out to be the most successful tour we've done ever! There's really no reason for us to complain."

On whether he is satisfied to reach this level of success at this point in the band's career:

"Oh yeah, totally. We've worked on that for years, right? I'm really happy to see that it's finally happening. And you know what? To be honest, I'm happy that it's happening now with the ninth record and not with the second or third album, you know what I mean? Because it kinda gives us a new life; it's like a new exciting chapter for us. We've been around for 18 years and sometimes, band's with this much history, they basically repeat themselves, repeat their formula and they don't do anything exciting anymore. We still manage to put out new and exciting music and having new labels and new contracts behind us and the fact that there are so many new people coming into the music and supporting us, it helps out. It's very inspirational. It's awesome!"

On how "Evangelion" compares to BEHEMOTH's previous albums:

"I really think that this new record is more emotional, and at some points is more technical than anything that we've done in the past. Just listen to 'Transmigrating Beyond Realms Ov Amenti' or the opening song, 'Daimonos' — the most technically challenging song we've put out ever. But at the same time, the songs are so diverse, like 'He Who Breeds Pestilence' or 'Lucifer' — songs that have this primitive, primal, barbaric vibe that we didn't really play on 'The Apostasy' or 'Demigod' because back then we considered it to be too primitive or too simple or not ambitious enough. So in this case, I consider 'Evangelion' to be the most liberating record because we just played everything that we wanted to play. Nothing else. We wanted our satisfaction, our artistic fulfillment. That was the priority there. That's it."

On the "Evangelion" writing and recording process:

"I would say that, like everything that we've done, it was very natural. We tried to compete with ourselves back in the day, we tried to compete with everyone else. And now, we just try to be ourselves, you know what I mean? And we just don't give a fuck if people get it or not or if people like us or not and this and that. We don't care about media. We don't care about fans. I mean, we do care about fans, but I'm talking about but I'm talking about their opinions, y'know? No opinion can stand between us and our vision. Achieving our artistic vision is our highest priority no matter what. That's the point.

"The whole process was totally different. Obviously we started with the drums, then the guitars and bass and vocals and that sort of stuff, but the whole structure was different. We had at least, if I remember, four different engineers in the studio. Myself and the band were the ones who produced the record but like, every chapter in the studio, every next step, like doing drums and there was one guy doing the engineering, then we have another guy doing the guitars with us, and a different guy doing vocals and so on and so on. This kept the whole process very fresh. Every time we get a new guy in the room, it was something very refreshing, something new. It was definitely easier to do it this way than have one guy sticking with us for like two or three months and we would, at the end of the day, just lack inspiration and we would hate each other. That was something that was different and it was good. It was a very creative process and it helped us out. It just basically squeezed our balls and we could deliver something extra I hope. Then I flew to London to Colin Richardson (MACHINE HEAD, CARCASS, NAPALM DEATH),and it was the first time that we were working with him. He was totally into the project and he wanted to achieve the best possible result, and he was awesome. He was very anal about details and stuff. It was great, man. Then I flew down to New York to meet with Ted Jensen, and Ted was just pro all the way. This guy's done CELINE DION and MADONNA along with fuckin' METALLICA. He's a big name in the business and mastering, he just did one mastering — he just did it and it was it. There were no extra tweaks — it was amazing. It looks like it was a great process. It was a great time and it helped us out to deliver the most honest, most complete and unique album from BEHEMOTH."

Read the entire interview from The Metal Forge.

BEHEMOTH kicked off its North American "Evangelia Amerika" headlining tour on January 7 at the Theater Of The Living Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (with support from SEPTICFLESH and LIGHTNING SWORDS OF DEATH).

The band's setlist was as follows:

01. Ov Fire And The Void
02. Demigod
03. Shemamforash
04. Conquer All
05. LAM
06. As Above So Below
07. Slaves Shall Serve
08. At The Left Hand Ov God
09. Alas, Lord Is Upon Me
10. Decade Of Therion
11. Christians To The Lions
12. Chant For Ezkaton 2000
13. Lucifer

Fan-filmed video footage of the concert can be viewed below. More clips are available at this location.