1993 demo Return of the Northern Moon, originally a cassette but re-released over the years on vinyl and CD.
The following year the group returned to (the aptly named) Pagan Records to release their debut album Sventevith (Storming Near The Baltic), reusing the song title from the previous year’s release though not the song itself. Recorded in December 1994, the album saw Behemoth reduced to the core duo of Nergal and Baal thanks to a falling-out with Frost, though once again, the group employed a guest synth player to create instrumentals, this time Sascha “Demonious” Falquet, the young but talented writer behind Swiss black metal fanzine Skogen.
While the lyrics continued where the mini-album left off (once again the opening lines refer directly to the forest, the sleeve declaring the opus to be a “rebirth of our old pagan traditions”) musically a massive leap had occurred, with the songs now complementing the nature-worshipping lyrics with emotive and epic folk ingredients. The heavy use of both synths and acoustic guitars gave the numbers a rich texturing and once again suggested a Norwegian influence, this time from Emperor, Dimmu Borgir, and, perhaps most of all, Ulver.
“I listened to a lot of Norwegian music, we were huge fans of that whole scene,” Nergal confirms. “We recorded in like two weeks, it was in our home town and it was pretty amateurish. We used an eight- or twelve-track recorder, all analog—back then there were no computers, so the mix was happening on the [desk’s] controls and you had to do it all at once. Sometimes there were three or four people doing certain things at once; one would go for delay, the other guy would be in charge of the fade-out … it looked funny but of course it was also very, very stressful. [Demonious] was a friend of mine,” he continues, “he was actually a kid, I was seventeen, he was fourteen or something. He came up with a primitive tune on his keyboard and sent it to me, I mean it wasn’t anything spectacular but I just liked the vibe of it and asked him about using it on our record.”
A Pagan Records flyer featuring both Nergal and Baal.
Around this time the band were actively distancing themselves from the increasingly right-wing Polish scene, Nergal departing The Temple of Infernal Fire circle that he had co-founded, which in turn reinvented itself as the more politically charged Temple of Fullmoon. He thus found himself criticized and confronted by members of acts from the rising NSBM scene, who berated him in interviews for his perceived acceptance of death metal, his association with supposedly “untrue” bands such as Christ Agony or Vader, for Behemoth’s decision to sign to Pagan Records, and also for his use of Slavic themes, since they chose to identify instead with an Aryan identity. The sleeve of the debut full-length more than echoed this conflict and though the thank-you list included Graveland, soon to become one of the band’s most vocal critics, it also stated in defiant form:
“BEHEMOTH sends pure hate and disgust to: all of the kids who disgrace the Polish scene, trying to be fascists without having any knowledge … This ‘scene’ is dead and BEHEMOTH sits on the highest throne of the true one! If someone wants to beat us up or kill us, you are invited! Welcome to HELL!!!”
Behemoth would certainly continue drawing upon Slavic culture on their second full-length Grom (“Thunder”), released on German label Solistitium in early 1996 and featuring new bassist Leszek Dziegielewski of death metal act Damnation. A heavier and less straightforward listen than its predecessor, Grom is an occasionally chaotic album of strong contrasts that throws a wide array of musical ingredients into the mix, including female vocals, expressive half-sung, half-rasped vocals from Nergal (sometimes bringing to mind the work of Attila Csihar), time changes, folky acoustic guitar breaks and some punishing death metal elements.
“Grom was pretty much like a new band doing new music,” explains Nergal. “We just wanted to develop a different sound, and went more into the pagan orientation, adding some extra elements, some female vocals—which wasn’t very fortunate. I mean I know a lot of people love this album, but in my opinion I think there’s a lot of crap on it. But then again it’s a Behemoth album, it’s not something I’m ever going to say, ‘It wasn’t me’ or ‘I had a blackout,’ you know, I knew what I was doing. I was so much into these Slavic stories and I wanted to bring this into the music to make it more heathenish, more pagan, than regular black metal I would say. We were really into the Nordic thing and then after a while we decided we have our own culture, an ancient pre-Christian culture, which we found very inspirational and created something which was more original in a way.”
Following the album’s release, the band made a significant change in personnel, with Baal replaced by percussionist Inferno (Zbigniew Robert Promínski), a bandmate of Leszek Dziegielewski’s (Les) in Damnation. Indeed, 1997 saw not only the release of Behemoth’s Bewitching the Pomerania EP, but also Damnation’s Coronation EP, featuring none other than Nergal on bass. Interestingly, Damnation’s next official release—2000’s full-length Resist—would feature neither Nergal or Inferno, but would include Baal on vocals, who had played with Les in blackened death metal outfit Hell-Born since 1996, and indeed, does so today, handling bass and vocals.
“[Baal] was in all the teenage bands I was in,” explains Nergal. “I met him when I was a kid and lived just next door pretty much. We shared the same interest and we loved the same music and when I decided to form a professional band, I thought, ‘Okay, he’s in.’ He wasn’t really the greatest drummer, he was a bit like Abaddon, he had the passion and spirit for what we did and that’s how we became companions. After a while, when Behemoth evolved in a more technical direction, he couldn’t continue as it was just too complex.”
Indeed, while the addition of Les and Inferno might not have had a direct impact on the songwriting—which Nergal apparently handled alone until around 2000—their abilities, particularly in the case of the latter, certainly allowed Behemoth to move toward the more precise death metal sound that the frontman desired.
“With Inferno in the band you can play pretty much any sort of music you want,” continues Nergal. “He’s not just a great technical drummer, he’s a drummer who plays with heart—like a mix of Dave Lombardo—probably one of the greatest extreme metal drummers out there—and the spirit of Abaddon of Venom. But don’t mix it up with abilities, ’cos Abaddon was a poor drummer, I just mean he’s just a spiritually driven drummer, he’s down for the genre and this band.”
The group’s resulting musical transition would be captured on the 1998 album Pandemonic Incantations, before being cemented on the 1999 follow-up Satanica. “[Pandemonic Incantations] was a bridge between the old and the new I would say,” states the frontman. “We started playing music that was very fresh and different and defined that style with Satanica, so it was like a bridge between two different worlds. We just didn’t want to stay in one place, we wanted to become more technical, more ambitious, and move in different directions. Stagnating is pretty much dying and not just in an artistic sense … but we’re talking about music, and playing the same music is pretty much standing in one place and dying.”
Indeed, Behemoth would leave behind their early folk-influenced Nordic black metal sound entirely, increasingly honing what is generally described as a “blackened death metal” sound. Still, though albums such as Thelema.6, Demigod, and Evangelion employ the deep vocals and precise, technical brutality of death metal bands such as Vader or Nile, Behemoth nonetheless retain many links to their black metal past. Most obvious is their continued use of corpsepaint, the atmospheric overtones of old, and their distinctly anti-Christian stance.
The latter has seen Nergal come under fire in the band’s heavily Catholic home, in particular with regard to a show the band played in the country in 2007, where frontman Nergal destroyed a Bible on stage and described the Catholic Church as “the most murderous cult on the planet.” The incident would be brought to the courts on no less than three separate occasions, the final time by political party Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (“Law and Justice”). The other two cases involved Ryszard Nowak, head of
the “All-Polish Committee for Defense Against Sects,” who lost his case against Nergal and then lost another case brought by Nergal after he continued to slander the frontman in the media.
“Even though he failed he was calling me a criminal in interviews so I decided to bring him to the court,” Nergal explained to me in an interview for Metal Hammer. “I’m everything but a criminal, I pay big taxes and consider myself a pretty fucking good citizen. And actually I won the case, so the guy had to cover the cost of the trial, apologize in the biggest Polish newspaper, and on top of that I requested that he pay a thousand U.S. dollars to a homeless dog’s asylum. Why? Firstly, I thought it would be funny as fuck, secondly I thought it would be the only positive thing this person does in their life and thirdly, I thought it might change the perception of metal for some people in Poland.”
Going some way beyond simple anti-Christian sentiment, Nergal’s philosophic and occult interests remain a central focus of Behemoth’s work. Over the years the group have expanded from an exclusively pagan worldview (albeit with Satanic overtones) to encompass a wide range of left-hand-path thinkers including Aleister Crowley—whose own philosophy “Thelema” obviously inspired 2000’s Thelema.6—and fellow Englishman Austin Osman Spare, whose form of magick, Zos Kia Cultus, inspired the 2002 album of the same name.
“The whole liberating aspect is just groundbreaking,” he says of Crowley, “when you realize it’s all about you and your decisions it gives your life a different quality. That’s why I got ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law’ on my back, because it’s something you carry with you through life, it’s fucking crucial and should tell you how serious I am about his words.”
For Nergal, lyrical depth is essential within black and death metal, these being genres where many outfits utilize occult themes without any real understanding of what they are singing about. “We are really into the things that are definitely lacking in the extreme metal scene these days,” he reflects. “There are millions of bands singing about different things but they don’t mean it. When I hear a new band singing about something I don’t trust it, I have the feeling that they don’t stand behind what they say. When I listen to [Morbid Angel’s] Blessed is the Sick or Samael’s Worship Him I know that these guys meant what they say, but I don’t get that impression any more. There is this wave of black metal from France that brings some freshness into the genre, the danger factor in the music is back and that’s awesome—with Watain or Deathspell Omega for example, I get those goosebumps—but other than that there’s very little inspiring happening.”
Never back down: Nergal today. Photo: Ester Segarra.
Now into their third decade, Behemoth have achieved a huge amount of success, steadily breaking into the metal mainstream, signing to Nuclear Blast and touring alongside acts such as Slayer and even Marilyn Manson. Despite this they have maintained both their esoteric subject matter and a punishing and uncompromising sound, something Nergal is determined not to lose as the band continue to grow in popularity.
“I do care about other people’s opinions but the opinion I care about the most is my own,” he concludes. “I’m my own hardest critic. I’m a good enough musician that I can make music to please the masses—if I wanted to I would make more money and sell more records. But at the end of the day you don’t want to look in the mirror and see a slut or a whore. You want to see an honest musician and artist.”
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FOLK AND FOLKLORE IN BLACK METAL PART I
GIVEN THAT black metal has positioned itself in opposition to the status quo, it’s unsurprising that its practitioners have often looked to other periods of history for inspiration—particularly those that precede the domination of Christianity and other Abrahamic religions. While the artists who have chosen to explore the themes of historical, national, and cultural identity in the greatest detail have generally tended to sidestep the topic of Satanism, they have almost always maintained the firm anti-Christian stance inherent to the genre, alongside a focus on spirituality. With ancient folklore, beliefs, and mythology common subject matter alongside the wonders and mysteries of nature, it’s unsurprising that both “folk black metal” and “Viking black metal” have proven largely synonymous with “pagan black metal.”
However one chooses to label it, there’s no doubt black metal has integrated folk themes and traditional forms of music to a far greater extent than any other form of metal before it. Indeed, it was black metal that played a key role in reigniting the wider “folk metal” explosion, a genre initially sparked by bands such as England’s Golgotha and Skyclad, but which lay dormant until the late nineties and the rise of bands such as Finntroll, Falkenbach, and Moonsorrow, all spawned from the fringes of the black metal scene. For this reason, folk and Viking black metal has remained an often transitory movement, with many of the key albums either being sidesteps or starting points for the bands concerned, who have generally tended to become notably less “black” and rather more “Viking” or “folk” as time goes on.
An early case in point is the very godfathers of Viking metal, Bathory, whose Viking elements only began to surface on their fourth album, 1988’s Blood Fire Death. Though heavy metal bands had hinted at pre-monotheistic themes of paganism and witchcraft before, this was the first point at which ancient historical and folk influences really began to really filter into extreme metal consciousness. In fact, the compositions themselves owe more to Wagnerian classical influences than actual folk music (acoustic guitars in the classic “A Fine Day To Die” aside) but the album nonetheless marks the introduction of localized folklore (in this case Northern European mythology) into a culture which until then had been largely preoccupied with inversions of Christian mythology.
In a move that would be imitated by many later bands, Bathory would leave black metal behind altogether on the next two Viking-themed albums, Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods, but by then younger bands were present to fill the void and expand on these themes in a black metal context, most notably within the burgeoning scene in Norway. First and foremost were Enslaved, who adopted and pushed the concept into the second-generational black metal sound, becoming what many considered to be the archetypal Viking black metal band in the process.
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“This is a band that always goes their own way, and has done so since their debut album. They never repeat themselves, and always explore new musical landscapes. I have nothing but the greatest respect for their musicianship and live performances. I think that they will be paving the way for other bands for many years to come.”
—Hváll (Windir and Vreid)
Like many of Norway’s black metal pioneers, Enslaved’s origins lie within the death metal genre, in this case a short-lived demo outfit called Phobia. Formed by vocalist and bassist Grutle Kjellson and drummer Hein Frode Hansen (who later formed gothic metal band Theatre of Tragedy) when they were sixteen and seventeen respectively, the group soon expanded into a five-piece, making the somewhat unlikely move of recruiting a local twelve-year-old guitar player named Ivar Bjørnson in the process.
“We heard rumor of a little guy who enjoyed thrash metal,” recalls Grutle with a smile. “There were no people playing metal where we lived, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we get hold of this little guy?’ I remember the first rehearsal he was looking at me saying [adopts a high-pitched voice] ‘How can you sing like that?’ He already had this way of playing the guitar though, no one taught him how to play, he had his own way—he actually taught me and I was a few years older.”
Despite the age gap, Ivar’s and Grutle’s backgrounds were not entirely dissimilar, with both being lured into metal via Kiss’ seemingly ubiquitous promotional campaign in Norway.
“I was really into the Kiss thing without hearing any of the music,” laughs Ivar. “In Norway every Saturday the kids would get these bags of goodies and the coolest bag was the Star Bag, where you would get these nice treats and Kiss pictures that you would
trade at school. Also the most popular show at the time was about this family, and the girl would always have this dream where she would be onstage with Kiss, so it became a big thing for me, and my grandfather bought me a cassette and that’s when I started to collect cassettes.”
Moving onto WASP, then thrash, and eventually death metal, Ivar was certainly well-primed for a position in Phobia. However, with their use of synths, crawlingly slow passages and clean guitars, Phobia were far from a typical death metal band. In retrospect their atmospheric compositions showcase a short-lived sound that existed—particularly in Norway—around 1990/1991, one that provides something of a “missing link” between the death and black metal scenes. It’s no surprise then that their Feverish Convulsions demo, released in mid-1991, shares many qualities with Darkthrone, Thou Shalt Suffer, and even Cradle of Filth output during the same period. Lyrically too, the band were looking beyond the typical gore themes of death metal and instead drawing upon some of the Viking themes that Enslaved would later become famous for.
“One of the songs on the demo is called ‘The Last Settlement of Ragnarok,’” Grutle explains. “Ragnarok is obviously part of the [Norse] mythology—the Christians have rewritten things so it sounds like Armageddon, the end of the world, but to me it’s always been like phases … you go as far as you can with something and it slips away or becomes a success. In Norse mythology you take the nine steps, then you can’t go any further—that’s Ragnarok. You date a girl for a few years, for example, and you can’t go any further, that’s Ragnarok.”
Phobia would split up soon after the demo’s release, playing their final show in Bergen’s waterside USF Verftet (later home of Hole in the Sky festival and also the venue where the majority of this interview took place) shortly after their official disbandment. Grutle and Ivar weren’t overly concerned, however, since before the demo had even been issued, Enslaved had already been formed, the two men joining forces with a local drummer named Kai Johnny Mosaker. A childhood friend of Ivar’s, he initially went under the name K Johnny (for the first demo, entitled Nema/Promo Tape 1991) but would later become known as Trym Torson.
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