BEHEMOTH: Three Decades of Therion (2026)

By BRIAN GIFFIN

BEHEMOTH first visited Australia in 2006. Touring in support of their seventh album Demigod, they were a band on the brink of breaking out beyond the underground. By the end of the following year, they had featured at Ozzfest and co-headlined a US tour. With another six albums under their belt since that first Australian trip 20 years ago, Behemoth have amassed a substantial legacy and enjoy a reputation as one of the world’s most influential and best-known extreme metal acts.

Since the very beginning, Adam “Nergal” Darski has been the frontman, guitarist and principal creative force behind the band. He acknowledges that it has been a long road.

“The band’s almost 35 years old now. We are old. We are ancient! Even though I’m only 48. I look back and think, ‘Fucking Hell. I started when I was 15. It took me forever to get to this point’.

“I need to really remind myself,” he continues, “‘Man, to go and tour Australia on a regular basis, on every record, every cycle, on the other side of the globe. Most people never get to do that. They have no time, they have regular jobs, can’t afford it. But you do that!’ I know I’m getting a little nostalgic here, but the bottom line is that it’s been worth it. All this struggle, touring and struggling through all the obstacles.”

Nergal certainly seems nostalgic and thoughtful. He ruminates about how much longer the band might go on before they all get too old to keep doing it.

“How many more tours of Australia can we do? If we do a tour every three years on average, and I’m 48, how many times can we make this 40 hour flight and survive the kangaroo meat?” He chuckles grimly. “I’m just fucking with you, but it is an existential question. How many more European tours can I do? How many more of those winters am I going to go through? That’s probably what’s happening mentally within me. That kind of existentialist reflection accompanies any kind of life adventure that I become immersed in.”

He returns to the idea a little while later, making the observation that there’s an older generation of extreme metal bands that potentially won’t be around that much longer. They could well be a benchmark for how long Behemoth continues.

“”With the tempo and all the blastbeats and stuff, you can’t do this at the age of 70,” he points out. “Karl Sanders and David Vincent and Piotr Wiwczarek from Vader, Cannibal Corpse, Glen Benton, all those dudes – they’re testing those grounds now. Because they’re a decade older than me. They are at the frontier of how much longer and further can we go with this music. I’m not talking artistically. Glen’s nearly 60 and he’s aging like gold! I’m observing him and it’s like, he has five more years – maybe 10! I’m doing these calculations in my head, and I talk to Glen about that. I’m thinking about it too, about when the trip is going to end.”

That kind of thinking has changed the way Nergal now looks at touring and the creative process. Behemoth’s 10th album, 2014’s The Satanist, proved to be both the band’s creative watershed and its commercial breakthrough. Nergal realised that his band no longer needed to feel like they were constantly “on the run”. He decided to start enjoying things more.

“When we did The Satanist, I kind of paused. I had this reflection – ‘You know what? Just tour, and make sure you enjoy the touring. When you tour, embrace that momentum and not think about other things’. I’m always doing that, thinking about strategy – let’s conquer the world! That is my conquering nature. But I kind of slowed down. We didn’t slow down with touring, every tour since Satanist was massive. But every album was a lot of work. So I started enjoying myself on tour and embracing the moment on stage. Then taking my time to rest, and read my book, and taking holidays in Australia after we had done [the tour], and just enjoying the life more. Embracing the eventual success of the tour or record. That’s what we do now.” 

He uses an old joke about bulls on a hillside making their way toward a herd of cows as a parable for his own current philosophy about Behemoth’s career. 

“The young bull says, ‘Let’s run down the hill, grab one of those cows and fuck her!’ And the old bull says, ‘No, we aren’t running anywhere. We’re gonna slowly walk down the hill, and we’re gonna fuck them all!’ That is exactly where I am in my life now – career-wise, life-wise, everything. Whatever needs to come, will come sooner or later. Or,” he says with a pause and a grin,  “it won’t!”

So after what he describes as a highly successful Latin American tour, Behemoth are relaxing and taking it easy before escaping the “gloomy and dark and depressing” Polish winter for the next leg.

“I can’t wait to get back on the road,” Nergal says earnestly. “We start in Türkiye, and I think, Istanbul, nice. I know this cool coffee shop and I’m going to go there and I’m going to make sure it’s the best Istanbul show that I can pull off. Because I don’t know if there’s going to be another one. There’s no guarantees. Then we’re going to fly to Thailand, and I’m definitely going to go to a masseuse and enjoy the food and you know what? I’m embracing touring life, and I’m embracing the fact that we have made one of our best records lately.”

Along with celebrating the current record, Nergal has a special project gearing up to pay homage to Behemoth’s first album release, 1995’s Sventevith (Storming Near the Baltic). With none of the other members involved in the band anymore, and admitting that attempting to rekindle the spirit of an 18-year-old playing lo-fi black metal would be difficult, if not impossible, Nergal devised an alternative. He will be performing the album with cult Icelandic black metal band MisÞyrming

“We became friends 14 years ago and I’ve been a fan ever since. They’ve been fans most of their lives. Absolutely amazing live act. I don’t want to do a low-key production with Behemoth to imitate those old school days. The production would be too much. So step down, get the energy from those youngsters and wake something else with it, a different form of abyss. Create this weird collaboration. I wouldn’t be able to play those early Behemoth songs the way they do. I don’t know how to explain that. They have this fierce ability in their fingers that I kind of lack. So I believe that if you mix it up, those two schools, those two generations, it’s going to be a very interesting outcome.”

Before all that happens, Nergal is bringing Behemoth down to Australia in February for their first tour since appearing at the Download Festival in 2019. Despite all the talk of growing old and throwing in the towel, he’s enthusiastic about the trip and assures us they will be the best shows Behemoth has ever done here.

“If my number comes up tomorrow, I die a happy man,” he says, without any suggestion that will happen. “I made 14 pretty fucking strong records. I made a nice career, made some people happy. I’ve pissed many people off. That also counts. And I fulfilled my life at a relatively early age. I’m only 48, and I’m not done yet. I have plenty up my sleeve, and trust me, when you come and see Behemoth in February… maybe some people will be like, Well they’re all aging now and yes, maybe we can’t keep up the same tempo, but we’re going to make it up to people on a different level that was totally unattainable for us 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. So if you haven’t seen Behemoth and you’re an Australian heavy metaller, please do come and witness that. It may be the last time. It may not. But we will do everything that is humanly possible to make those shows the biggest and best Behemoth shows that we have played in your lovely country.”

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