BEHEMOTH Frontman: 'I Have Dreams About Coming Back Onstage'

Revolver magazine has posted the second and final part of an in-depth interview with Adam "Nergal" Darski, the 33-year-old leukemia-stricken guitarist/vocalist of the Polish extreme metal act BEHEMOTH, who recently underwent a bone marrow transplant procedure. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Revolver: Have you been able to write any music lately?

Nergal: Not really, I did some riffs. I'm thinking maybe something cool will come out of it. Maybe not. We'll see. I wrote a lot of stuff — not musically, but lyrics. I got a lot of ideas for lyrics, a lot of verses here and there. Some of them are really, really cool. I can't wait to put them into the riffs. It was not like I was inactive artistically; I was. I just wasn't playing the guitar. I was coming up with different ideas. Honestly, now, I was seeing my graphic designer two days ago, and we were talking about the cover for the next record. I know it's two years until we fucking unleash it, but I always start working in the very early stages. And I just throw ideas at the table and just wait for them to grow. I want to make sure every idea is awesome and it's very mature I want to make sure that the whole album, every aspect — music, graphics, lyrics — they're going to pass the test of time. And it's going to be timeless at the end of the time, and 10 years down the road people are going to be thinking, Fuck, this awesome record, it's still fresh and it has a value to people.

Revolver: Speaking of that, this is BEHEMOTH's 20th anniversary, and I just wanted to know how that makes you feel.

Nergal: Yes, we're talking to Metal Blade, and Metal Blade's probably going to be releasing an official biography in English worldwide. It's going to be a book, with lots of pictures, 300 or 400 pictures. It should be finished in May, so we really hope that we're going to meet the deadlines because October is exactly when the 20th anniversary is happening. What's a better way to celebrate the anniversary than to release a biography? I don't see any. Some bands would do new versions of their old songs, and stuff that was pretty much every fucking band does it. We're going to do some shows here in Poland, but I'm most excited about the book. It's super exciting and I can't fucking wait to read it. I hope metalheads will want to read it — I know they're all about listening to the music, but it would be cool to have something like this. It's going to be authorized by the band, and it's a lot of cool stuff that you've never read in the interviews. A lot of pictures, a lot of rare pictures. So just wait and see. It's going to be awesome.

Revolver: What do you have planned for your concerts in October?

Nergal: Yeah, we just decided to play some so-called comeback shows in Poland just to warm up and see how we feel, just to be onstage again together. And I really hope that it's going to turn out great and that it's going to cause other tours and stuff. We have plans until the summer of next year. We already have some cool offers. We're talking to our agents. There's some really, really cool ideas. I don't want to reveal anything yet, but once we're done with October shows, and we feel good about it, and there's chemistry onstage, we definitely want to continue the "Evangelion" touring cycle. There's still some markets we didn't even touch. We've done over 100 shows so far to "Evangelion". We're going to do another 100 at least, and then we can focus on the next record.

To be honest, we can't wait to hit the stage again. I'm so fucking anxious. I'm so excited, so psyched about it. I have dreams about coming back onstage. I dream about BEHEMOTH shows. It's insane, I know, but I can't tell you how much it's a relief to the band and how much it means to us.

Read the entire second part of the interview at this location.