BEHEMOTH Frontman Talks About New Album

BEHEMOTH frontman Nergal recently spoke to the U.K.'s Live 4 Metal webzine about the group's latest CD, "Demigod", and tours past and present. Several excerpts from the interview follow:

Live 4 Metal: The album is out on Regain in Europe and will be out on Olympic in the U.S., as well as various other labels for the different territories. Is that a pain, is it difficult having to deal with a bunch of different labels?

Nergal: "Well, it was difficult to deal with every label separately. Talking to the lawyer, and dealing with every label, it's kind of a pain in the ass in a way, yes. But at the end of the day, the result might be only good. If one label fucks up, well then you have all the other labels doing a good job [laughs]. If you've got a deal with only one label, then you can only depend only on that deal, you can't do anything else. So if your relationship gets worse, you're fucked. My intention was to get the best out of every continent, so I really thought that Regain is just a great potential label and they would do a great job for us in Europe, and they're actually doing it. And then Century Media [through Olympic] is probably one of the best, if not the best, metal-oriented labels in the U.S. They're great guys too; they're huge BEHEMOTH fans and that just made me think maybe we should be there. I don't regret anything so far. They did a great job for 'Zos Kia Cultus' and they just warned me to prepare for double touring for this new album [laughs]. So I can be only happy. They have 50 bands maybe that are bigger than BEHEMOTH, but I feel they really believe in the band so I'm like, 'Fuck yeah!' Then there's Poland; we've dealt with this Mystic Productions label here in our country and it's also worked great. It's the third album for them, so it can only be good. It's a fresh and new start for us. Then we've got new guys in the band. Pretty much everything is new for us now. It's good to get that kind of feeling after 13 years."

Live 4 Metal: How did you decide on "Demigod" as the title?

Nergal: "In most cases, I come up with the title first, like years before. It was the same with 'Satanica'; I had 'Satanica' in mind for two years or something, the same goes for 'Zos Kia Cultus'. I'm like, fuck, this word ['Demigod'] is so well known. Nobody has ever had this kind of album title. It was the title for that kind of music, for those kind of lyrics. This is not some cliché metal title….you know, shadows of death [laughs] or stuff like that. How long can you go on with those kind of topics? Come on. 'Demigod' sounds huge, along with the graphics and the front cover. It just gives you the whole picture of what this band is all about. You don't really need to guess; you know it! That's how I think. I see BEHEMOTH as a very complex thing. It's an entity; it's graphics, it's music, it's lyrics, it's vision, it's the live setting, it's everything. It's very nicely put together and there is no bad side. It's just [that] everything fits perfectly; everything is linked."

Live 4 Metal: You got NILE's Karl Sanders to play on "XUL". What's the story there?

Nergal: "Karl knew that we were in the studio. I dropped him a line and asked him straight, 'Hey, do you want to lay your guest lead?' He just freaked out. He loved the idea. He took like two days to complete it. I put the song on his server and like two days later there was [a] solo, it was done already. There was like no big deal behind it. I just asked him and he said yes. 'Ok, let's do it.' He loved the song. It's one of the best solos on the album, that's for sure. I love it! It's one of the best songs, maybe because of the solo too [laughs]."

Read Nergal's entire interview with Live 4 Metal at this location.