Nergal: "Po moim trupie!" ("Over my dead body!")

Adam Darski, aka "Nergal" of the Polish blackened death metal band Behemoth, had already attained superstar celebrity status within Poland. Imagine a cross between Ozzy Osbourne, Johnny Depp, and Muhammad Ali, all brought together in a 33 year old mega rock star who also happens to be engaged to be married to Poland's answer to Lady Gaga.

So, of course, last week's announcement that Nergal's band, Behemoth, was canceling its tour, and that Nergal himself had been rushed in an ambulance to the Gdansk University Hospital for "serious medical treatment", unleashed a shit-storm of celebrity gossip madness.

Could anything be be more craven and depraved than swarms of mercenary photographers slithering around on the scaffolding that surrounds the hospital (which is currently undergoing major renovations) craning to get a shot of Nergal in his hospital bed with Doda, his beloved mega pop star fiance, at his side?

Yes -- it turns out there is something more craven and depraved than that.

When they heard the news, good Christians around Poland immediately began making public pronouncements (including, naturally, on the internet) that they were praying for Nergal in the hopes that his illness (the exact nature of which is still not officially disclosed) would convince him to turn away from his Satanic Death-Metal ways and embrace the teachings of Jeebus.

Nergal responded to these "prayers" for his conversion yesterday in an interview he gave to the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. Here is what Nergal had to say (using google translator to render the English, so parts of it are more fluid and fluent than others):

I never thought that my illness may become a pretext for some people to pursue their own crusade.

Voices of the fact that my current situation I can supposedly closer to God, make it cast its ideals and neck ugnę only right before the country's outlook, not only surprised me, but scared.

This is a typical example of cynical exploitation of someone else's misery for compacting additional capital for their own views.

Ill, certainly will be converted, discovers that the Christian religion, which so fiercely fought, it will be close ... Stop!

Why would a disease in any way alter my perspective? Yes, it is a difficult time for me and I can hardly avoid thinking about what the final, but the idea that under the influence of suffering change my views, priorities and values is as if someone decided that my body and my head was attacked by disease.

Suggestions were that I was able to convert or are just so funny ... because I like for what? Finally, I know quite well - and not just in the literary edition - Christian mythology, and I do not find there anything good, creative and beautiful.

I read a better book than the Bible, I read also wiser. War, blood, blackmail, rape, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, collaboration, betrayal ... evil protrudes from each side.

Someone will come and say that they do not understand the message of the Bible, and I answer him that he did not understand that Christianity is nothing but rusty and archaic building, which at any moment simply will collapse, and still lasts only because there are naive who, like sheep, blindly follow the dictates of their pastors.

Without questions, without thinking, from my perspective in no promised land, and the intellectual slaughter. Therefore, all those who ill wind in my chances for breaking my values, and hence myself, I answer the first and last and very short: po moim trupie! (Over my dead body!)

The original Polish text of the above can be found at the band's website here.

An end to the pretense,
and lying hypocrisy of Christianity.
An end to the servile virtues,
and superstitious restrictions.
An end to the slave morality.
An end to prudery and shame,
to guilt and sin,
for these are of the only evil under the sun,
that is fear.
[Liber 49, The Book of Babalon]
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If you admire the indomitable spirit of Nergal, you might also be interested in this other post on the subject of Blasphemy, and links found therein.

[The beautiful image accompanying the quote from Liber 49 (you will also find this quote on the Behemoth website) is a painting by Mary MacGregor-Reid. Here is a direct link to the image at her website. The painting itself is available for sale!]