BEHEMOTH To Release Authorized Biography Next Year

Finland's HardcoreSounds.Net conducted an interview with guitarist/vocalist Adam "Nergal" Darski of Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH on March 7, 2010 when the band played at Nosturi in Helsinki. During the chat, Nergal revealed plans for the group to release an authorized biography in 2011 to celebrate BEHEMOTH's 20th anniversary. "[It will contain] a lot of pictures and really nice stuff — three or four hundred pages," he said. "A lot of killer stuff. We wanna do a black metal version of 'The Dirt' by MÖTLEY CRÜE. It's one of my favorite books, actually, and I just wanted to make something similar. Obviously it's not gonna be so vicious and so crazy. I mean, you can't really beat MÖTLEY CRÜE when it comes to rock and roll insanity. But I wanna put out a book that's gonna be very sincere, that's gonna reveal some secrets and that's gonna show what it's like within the band, the inner spirit of the band. It's also exploring new dimensions for us, too. We've done music, we've done live performances, we've done video clips, but we've never written a book, so it's like a new territory for us that we enter now, and it's very challenging, too, so I really hope it's gonna be awesome. And actually, I hope that we'll make metalheads read, [laughs] not just lyrics and booklets but also like a proper book. That'd be great."

Darski was formally charged in his native Poland on March 8 for insulting Roman Catholics for a September 2007 incident when he reportedly called the Catholic Church "the most murderous cult on the planet" during a BEHEMOTH performance in Gdynia and tore up a copy of the Bible onstage.

After the incident, Ryszard Nowak, head of the All-Polish Committee for Defense Against Sects sued BEHEMOTH for promoting Satanism. Although a court expert witness on religious matters said that the act of destroying the Holy Bible could offend somebody's religious feelings (a criminal offense under Polish law),the case was discontinued because no one except Nowak accused BEHEMOTH of insulting their religious beliefs. (Under Polish law, there must be at least two formal complaints before a charge is laid. The previous complaint was made in 2008, and recently an unspecified number of other complaints had been filed.)

Nergal is pleading not guilty to the charge.

According to Metal As Fuck, in the first hearing, under cross examination, Darski stated what he does on stage is part of artistic license and it wasn't supposed to offend religious feelings. However, an expert on religious history and studies from Jagellonian University in Krakow stated that every copy of a bible could be considered a religious icon.

There was no judgment ruled against Darski in the first hearing, but now that a second complaint has been filed, the matter will be heard by the courts.

If found guilty, Darski faces up to two years in prison.