On the new record, you have a lot of melody and harmony at your disposal, you’re only giving a little bit here and there. It’s very sparse.
If you listen to Demigod, you’ll hear French horns here and there, and some orchestration. What we did with The Apostasy, we just brought it to the next level. We just did things the right way, the way that they should have been done before. Everything on The Apostasy is way more organic. This record is just a pure organic record.
Instead of doing like synthesizer work or sequencers, we used real people doing real things. All these spices, they don’t lower the aggressiveness of the record. It’s still crazy, it may be the fastest and most aggressive we’ve done so far. So I think it’s a perfect balance. I’m a huge fan of music in general. I want to make sure that this band plays music, it’s not just about making noise. It’s not just controlled chaos as some people say. It is controlled chaos, but it is also very much musical.
Tell me about working with [jazz pianist] Leszek Mozdzer and [Nevermore vocalist] Warrel Dane from Nevermore on ‘Inner Sanctum.’
It was all determined by the song. Basically, there’s always the same philosophy behind every song. When you hear a Behemoth song, you don’t say ‘Okay, well this guy did this thing accidentally.’ Never. If a part of a song demands something, it needs to get some extra instrumentation, whatever, we do it. We serve our own songs. We are slaves to our own songs, to our own albums.
‘Inner Sanctum,’ from the start, was a weird fucking song. You know, fucked up. A weird, crazy, depressive, evil, sinister tune. And what I wanted to do, I wanted to explore it even more. To capture the right feeling, the right atmosphere, I needed this extra instrument, you know. And then I didn’t want to just put my boring growling on the song (laughs), and I needed someone to express the lyrics. Warrel Dane was like the perfect choice here. And when I told him about it, he was flattered and stuff. He’s a big Behemoth fan. And it’s awesome man. I think we really did well with that song.
You’re attacking Christianity pretty ubiquitously on this record.
It all comes very natural. It’s not like I sit at home and say, ‘Okay, how can I harm these fuckers?’ I don’t really need to think about it. When I write a song—just listen to the songs—I say, ‘Okay, what can I sing about?’ With this music, I have to sing about things that are anti-establishment or anti-religious. I cannot sing about flowers and love and girlfriends, you know what I mean? That is not the right place for this.
‘Christgrinding Avenue,’ were you actually walking through Jerusalem thinking about it as ‘Christgrinding Avenue’?
Oh yeah, I was there. And this song is pretty much about that man. This is my reflection; this is my interpretation of what I experienced, what I saw. It’s a big incorporated commercial thing nowadays, and if you go, you will easily notice that. And all these lunatics, just fucking crawling up to the cross. And Golgotha is a church these days, of course, but it’s supposed to be the place where Jesus was crucified. I’m not a religious person you know, so what can I tell you? (laughs)
So you’re standing on Christgrinding Avenue and thinking about that, do you put that in a political context, does it occur to you?
In a way, yes. I come from a country where church has a very strong position, a strong influence on politics. Just regular human life, you know. We are all so infected with it, you know. And I have my reasons to strike it hard, you know what I mean. I have my reasons. People who see it from outside, I imagine there are guys in wherever, let’s say Australia, and they read our lyrics, and they say, ‘What’s this guy’s problem?’ (laughs)
It all depends on the angle you look at things. So my angle looks like that. This is how I see things and this is how I can help it. This is me. I don’t really need to pretend to be anyone else. And yeah, politically speaking, the whole Christian thing is pretty much just going in a downward spiral, and it’s rotting from inside. And that’s why the Church is so desperate. When you look at statistics, you’ll easily see that the numbers are just going lower and lower.
What are the plans after Ozzfest?
It’s crazy man, it’s crazy. (laughs) It’s a very hectic schedule, we’re doing Poland, then we do Europe with Kataklysm, and then we do another US tour with Job For A Cowboy and Gojira. And then we do Australia and New Zealand, and it’s already late December. We’ll be touring pretty much nonstop for this record for another few months. As I told you before, that’s pretty much the only way to make it. To make it fucking big and to establish yourself.
Behemoth will be performing on the second stage at Ozzfest at PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel, NJ, on Thursday, Aug. 16. The Apostasy is in stores now. Visit ozzfest.com or behemoth.pl for more info.
