On the Friday of Bloodstock festival, Mosh was able to catch up with the bassist of the legendary Polish band, Behemoth. They chatted about: what makes Bloodstock so special, their most recent album The Satanist and any bands that he was looking forward to potentially seeing.
Thanks to Sarah at Nuclear Blast for organising and Orion for his time.
You’ve been with the band since 2003, do you have a favourite album that was released before you ed?
I was quite a big fan of Satanica and I think that was my favourite before we started to make my favourite albums.
It’s quite a special performance you’re doing at the festival as you’re playing The Satanist in full. Is this the first time you’ve played it in full?
No. It’s been two and a half years for the cycle of this album. We’ve been on the road for a long time with this album and we’d been fitting in songs from the album in our shows. At some point we decided we wanted to do the album in its entirety and it’s been about half a year since we first did it.
Do you regard The Satanist as a concept as a whole rather than just a few individual songs?
When we were working on the album, we wanted to make it into one solid piece of music. When we were playing some songs from the album on previous tours, it just felt as though we were missing some parts which we would love to play in the show. It’s challenging of course, but these are my favourite shows to play from the stage perspective.
You problems with playing in Russia recently, have you been able to overcome these problems?
Well, we’re banned for 4 or 5 years and we’re not planning to get caught up with the Russian police again by fighting it. Somehow there’s forces that are much stronger than us that caused problems and forced us out of the country. That’s a big problem as Russia is one of the countries that is really growing in the metal scene. However, we do hope to return there someday soon.
And then we did have some issues in Poland. These are just because of politicians in local governments trying make themselves a star and get bigger by blaming someone for playing something offensive. This happens sometimes in Behemoth shows in Poland. We have a tour planned in about a month and half and so far there’s been no problems as we’re playing private venues. So yeah, it’s not easy but these are the things we sadly have to do.
One of the big sticking points behind your problems seems to be the fact that you ‘promote Satanism’. Do you feel as though you do?
That’s an interesting question. We do stand behind what we say and the way people interpret it is up to them and not us.
In your view what makes Bloodstock different to other festivals?
Well, we were one of the headliners about 2 years ago when we played. There’s a feeling of a great festival at some of the ones we play and Bloodstock is one of them. It’s really hard to find these little details that make it special but there’s something about the atmosphere of the place. I think people here care more about their music and that definitely shows in the response they give to the bands.
Is there a venue that you’ve played that you’d like to play again?
I don’t really venues this way but I was very sad to hear about the Bataclan. We had a show planned there and I was very sad to hear about what happened there.
And finally, are they any bands that you would like to see this weekend?
There’s a few other bands at the festival that I would like to see. I respect Twisted Sister but they’re not really for me. I’ll be there watching them though. I like Slayer as well. There’s no real better answer than that! I like Gojira as well, it kind of sucks that I won’t get to see them though. I’ll catch them somewhere though!
All photos courtesy of Bukavac Photography.
