BEHEMOTH – Interview with Bassist Orion

Poland’s BEHEMOTH started their career playing black metal in the early ‘90s. The group’s early recordings were premiere raw, atmospheric black metal albums, earning the group a strong cult following. 1996’s “Grom” showed the group beginning to experiment with death metal. 1999's “Satanica,” saw the group shed their early necro black metal style for a full-on death metal sound in the tradition of satanic death metal bands like DEICIDE and MORBID ANGEL. This sound was the beginning of what we now know as BEHEMOTH. The group refined this style with each ensuing album before arriving at a sound that is uniquely of their own. With each album came more success and tours that brought the band more exposure. 2007 has proved to be the group’s most crucial year. Touring Ozzfest brought the group before the largest audiences of any previous tours. They also released their most lucrative album of their career, “The Apostasy” on Century Media Records. Currently, BEHEMOTH is touring the States as a co-headliner with JOB FOR A COWBOY with GOJIRA and BENEATH THE MASSACRE opening. Metal Centre caught up with BEHEMOTH bassist, Orion during their concert in San Antonio at the White Rabbit.

BEHEMOTH has been touring non-stop. In the last four years, you’ve hit the road with AMON AMARTH, DEICIDE, HALFORD, DANZIG, LAMB OF GOD, Sounds of the Underground and Ozzfest. How has this touring contributed to the band’s success?

It’s always like, the more you do, the more you get. You go on tour just to expose the band. You just mentioned the U.S. tours that we’ve done. We started with those small ones. We started in a van. With each coming tour, we were getting more exposure and more people at the shows. Now, we’re on this one doing our first headlining, actually co-headlining tour ever for us in the U.S. They have contributed a lot. Every single one of them counts, every single show, every single day, every single fan matters. It all matters.

What was it like touring on Ozzfest?

Ozzfest was awesome. In my opinion, that was the most important tour for us, ever! No matter what happens, that was the biggest metal event that can happen for us. We were just exposed to all those kids who didn’t know what to expect. They were totally into it. Yeah, it was an awesome tour with great bands. I can say nothing bad about it.

How has the Radio Rebellion tour being going?

It has been a week. It started very well. I think that crowd wise, this show (White Rabbit in San Antonio, Texas) was the best show on the tour. I’m talking about the response from the people. I’m really surprised because I remember Texas not being the best market for us, but it seems like things are changing. Yes, it has been a very good tour with great bands. One of my favorite bands is on it, GOJIRA. I’m personally very happy about it happening. This is the first time for us in the U.S., so far, so good. I’ve loved GOJIRA for years and I’ve followed everything they’ve been doing. I love it!

Tell our readers about the set list you chose.

We’re doing some of the songs from the new album on this tour to promote “The Apostasy.” We do three off that one, a few off “Demigod” and we just go through all the other albums. These are the strongest songs that we have. We’re not choosing groovy or slow songs in order to show them to the younger kids who are coming to our shows to see JOB FOR A COWBOY. We doing fast songs, all the blast beats. We’re doing fast songs, no matter what’s happening. It’s working, anyways. I like the set list, but it’s a bit too short for me because we just came back from a few other tours in Europe and we were doing seventeen songs on it. We played twelve songs tonight.

One of the songs you guys played that I thought was interesting was an old song. Tell me about that song. It was from 1992, black metal!

The title of that song is “Summoning of the Ancient Ones.” It’s from the demo that we recorded in 1992. It sounds totally different nowadays. We just record the song for the next studio session. We changed a lot in it. It’s actually one of my favorite live songs that we played.

We were listening to “Storming Near the Baltic” on the way up here.

This was way before. I was shitting in my pants then. I wasn’t even in the band yet.

I’ve seen BEHEMOTH several times. Everytime you close with “Chant for Eschaton 2000. Why do you always close with this song?

That’s a great song to close the concert. Is there any other reason? We just like the song, and it has this atmosphere. It has this massive thing going on. It is nothing special; we just think it’s a cool song to close the show. It sounds like the closing up of something. We’ve been playing this song for so many years and it has to changed a lot. As you’ve said, we’ve been playing that song for many, many years. There are a lot of things changing in us, so we change a lot of the details in the songs that we play live. We are not aware of all that is happening sometimes. A few years back, somebody played the original version of the song accidentally. We were like, “what the hell is this? Why is this so different from what we do now?” We thought it was so different from what we do live, so we decided to re-record the song. The original version was “Chant for Eschaton 2000.” The re-recorded version is going to be titled “Chant for Eschaton 2007,” and that’s how it sounds nowadays. It should be out on an E.P. next year.

That’s the hair-twirling song.

Yeah, that’s why we like to close with that one. Plus, we do all the extra stuff like the masks, costumes and other stuff sometimes. It just depends on the tour.

BEHEMOTH is enjoying great success in the States. How are you doing in your home country, Poland? Is your popularity more or less in your native land?

It seems like it is growing. We just did a Polish tour. We always do a separate Polish tour. We do something like ten shows throughout Poland. The biggest tour that we’ve done considering the amount of people at our shows was averaging seven hundred or something. At the biggest city, we had fifteen hundred at our show. For Poland, that is incredible! These are the results that none of the metal bands had for many years. It seems like the popularity is growing worldwide.

A few years ago, I recall an interview with VADER. VADER spoke about how difficult it was for an extreme band like them to break out in Poland. Is it easier now for BEHEMOTH to exist and thrive in your homeland?

Many things have changed since then. The times when VADER was establishing in Poland were completely different. Now, it seems like has gotten easier, but from my point of view it is difficult because we have so many good bands now, so many shows, so many events happening all around. It’s easier considering all the politics and stuff like that, but at the same time it’s not easy at all because there are so many bands to compete with. Plus, Poland is extremely Catholic. We just had a whole thing go on not long ago and before that, there was this organization working by the government that was trying to ban us in Poland. So, it’s not that easy at all. They were trying to close down our tour and everything. Of course, they did not succeed, but we had to cancel a few shows.

On Metal Centre, we have pictures of the infamous GORGOROTH show where they got banned.

That was just one person suing the band because of religious feeling. That’s a different thing. What I’m talking about is the organization working for the government. The GORGOROTH thing started with one person and ended up in court, and it was a big thing. It started with one person who was having some problems and it built from there.

We had problems like that in the ‘80s. We had a group called the P.M.R.C. We broke them. Artistic expression is still pretty free over here.

Yeah, that’s a good thing about the U.S. That’s what I really like about it. Imagine GWAR going to Europe and doing that thing with the Pope that they do. They would just end up in jail, you know. Here, I can come to show and see what they want to do. That’s a good thing.

“The Apostasy” made a strong debut. Why do you think this album is doing so well?

I don’t know, it’s just a good fucking album (laughs). We didn’t expect it to do so well, to be honest. Whenever there is a recording session for us, we get so stressed. We are so afraid of everything that is happening. We pay so much attention to every single detail that we are completely unsure what is going to happen after it is released. Our hands were shaking while we were waiting. Then the reviews have been just awesome. I think it is a good album for us.

How does this album compare to past releases?

This album was made by people with more experience. Each coming album showed our condition at the current time. It doesn’t really differ in the matter of style, it is another BEHEMOTH album, but at the same time we paid so much attention to everything. Everything just managed to be better on this album than the previous one. It sounds different. It’s the most organic sounding album of this band. We used pretty much the same amount of everything that we were using before, but the result is a bit different. It is more like live playing. We put so much more effort into it. The drums are live, besides the kick triggers. Everything else is way more simple, but it just turned out to be better this time.

Can you go into more detail about the recording process for this album?

I don’t know why but we take a long time in the recording. Each time it is a pain in the ass for us. This album—it took three months to record the tracks and two weeks of mixing. That’s a lot for a metal band. Whenever we record, we spend all our time in the studio and doing nothing besides it. It is just too stressful to get relaxed and have something else going on at the same time. I don’t know how all those bands do that, like they record a couple of tracks, go on tour, come back record some of it. I don’t know if we could stand it. Whenever we are working, we are totally focused on what we were doing. Plus, BEHEMOTH takes all the extra time and people in the studio for all the choirs, trumpets, and everything. It’s all live on this album.

Do you actually have classical or jazz musicians?

We have a jazz pianist, two guys playing all those trumpets and an actual choir. So speaking of the recording session, that’s not the most relaxing time, but whenever it’s done, we are waiting for the final product. It is just so hard to be in the studio with this band (laughs).

How does all this instrumentation translate live?

We have a sampler and we play all the extra stuff from the sampler. That’s how it works. The drummer has the click in the earphones and the samples go in the PA. It would be impossible to bring all those people on tour. That would look stupid. Imagine all the fat guys behind me playing trumpets. Man, how would that look?

What does having a horn on your album do for your music?

It is a war instrument. We play war-fucking metal. That’s why we have it. It’s all about this military atmosphere. That’s why we resound the horn. That’s why we use it in a few spots.

Does it help give it that Eastern quality, especially when the horns hit the high note? You do a lot of songs about Mesopotamia.

I don’t know if it’s about the Eastern quality or the war stuff, it’s just a part of BEHEMOTH for the last two years and this time we had a chance to do it live not just sampled. Yeah, I think we are going to stick to it for some time, using all those instruments. That’s a good thing. That’s a little extra thing you can have.

You have a video on the Headbanger’s Ball. Please tell our readers about the making of that video.

“Prometherion,” we shot that video in Hollywood. We jumped from Ozzfest just for one day, went over there, and did it. I think that’s going to be the most impressive BEHEMOTH video ever! We already have it done, and it will be on MTV this weekend (October 27th), and next week on the internet everywhere. It is BEHEMOTH style considering all the mixing of the video, but at the same time, it is way different from the two videos that we did before that. It was a pleasure to work with some different people. The last two videos that we did were done with a Polish team. We’re not saying that it was a bad thing or bad videos, but at some point in time you feel the need to change something. We were going through all the music videos and trying to think who we would like to work with, we got a hold of those guys and made an awesome video.

What is next for BEHEMOTH after this tour?

After this tour, we are going to have a two-week break. That is going to be our first long break since April of this year, then Australia, a long break—a month and a half, that’s the longest I’ve had in a while. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m gonna go back home. A week is fine, but a month! I don’t know what I’m going to do! I’ve been on tour for such a long time. We do this little break, and then we go on tour again. We’re going to do some U.S. tour again and another European tour. Some big things are going to happen….

But you can’t let the cat out of the bag yet, huh?

(Both laugh) Nope.

Metal Centre is owned and run by Sylvon, who originates from Poland. In addition to having a large Polish readership for the U.S. site, we also have a Polish Metal Centre. Would you please relate a message in Polish to our Polish readers?

Pozdrawiam wszystkich polskich cztelników! wielkie dzięki za chwilę uwagi, pozostańcie silni!

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