NERGAL: 'BEHEMOTH Is Better Than Before'

AOL's Noisecreep recently spoke with guitarist/vocalist Adam "Nergal" Darski of Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH about his health issues, his experiences battling leukemia, and how that has influenced the writing of his forthcoming record. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Noisecreep: So how did you originally discover something was wrong with you? Do you remember the first signs of the illness?

Nergal: I found out that I was sick in the hospital when the diagnosis came. It was in August [2010], but the symptoms came approximately two months prior to when I was diagnosed with leukemia. The symptoms were I had bumps all over my head. Everywhere where my hair was I has like this skin infection or something underneath my fingers. I thought it was a skin infection or skin disease or allergy or something. I had no clue. I left for a tour and it wouldn't disappear. It was still there. I felt fine but I was playing shows every day. I was drinking alcohol. Everything was fine. This time, I would have diarrhea pretty much all that time. I would lose weight but I was in good spirits all the time. It was weird. After that, because of the concerts starting, I started having breathing problems and started sweating like a pig. Two days before I officially got to the hospital it was pretty disastrous.

Noisecreep: Does this whole experience seem surreal to you, that you got a clean bill of health while other patients may not?

Nergal: To be honest, for some reason, I was aware. Everything was so great [for me]. I know there were people dying and people leaving in black body bags. I saw that. With the others being there, it could happen to anyone there, but everyone else's health cases are different. For some reason, I had to find strength, and in my case it's going to be not as heavy and not as dangerous as others. I had this faith and I never questioned it. I never doubted that. On one hand, I'm relatively young when this happened to me. I was in really good shape because my whole life I've been taking good care of myself. I was never a heavy drinker or doing drugs. I was doing sports. Probably if it had been a different person, [there may be] more damage and may go probably the other way. I'm saying I had one hundred percent faith and I was aware that everything was so great. I was making plans for BEHEMOTH. I've been working... not every day... but constantly I've been working on new projects... a DVD and a book and doing some interviews here and there. I tried to make plans. That's me thriving through the whole process. Stay there and be decadent. Stay there in the hospital and go, "Let's see what happens. Let's see what doom brings." No fuckin' way! It's myself who determines my doom. That's how I see it.

Noisecreep: During this time, your fanbase really came together for you.

Nergal: It was crazy. I never expected that. I don't expect massive feedback from people. I'm not that egotistic like when I get sick, everyone's going to help me out. Let's see what happens. If I mean something to people, they're going to help me out. They're going to give me support. I'm not that arrogant to say that everyone's going to support me. I was fucking shocked! All the metal community would help me out and gave me strength. It definitely kept me motivated during this hard time. It meant a lot.

Noisecreep: When do you resume playing shows?

Nergal: We're doing some shows in Poland in October. I'm excited about it. We're probably doing some Asian and Australian dates around December. Full-on European and U.S. headlining tours are planned for spring 2012. Get ready. It's going to be a full-on tour. We need to complete the "Evangelion" cycle and then we start recording the next record. We're not rushing. We want to make sure that the comeback tour is planned with pyro and the craziness. BEHEMOTH is better than before!

Read the entire interview from Noisecreep.