Adam “Nergal” Darski has singled out Demigod as the Behemoth record he would most willingly perform front to back, while ruling out Zos Kia Cultus (Here And Beyond) outright and conceding that he spent years publicly ridiculing the very format he is now working in. The Behemoth founder made the remarks to Jerry Kurunen of Finland’s Rauta, speaking while in the middle of a 2026 live project built around the band’s 1995 debut.
That project has put Nergal in a position he once treated with open contempt. Asked whether the current shows feel nostalgic and whether other Behemoth albums could get the same treatment, he traced his change of heart back more than a decade.
“Yes. And I remember, it was around The Satanist era, when I would officially mock bands that would do, like, ‘Oh, we’re doing this album tour,’ or ‘we’re doing that album tour.’ I’d be so proud, like, because The Satanist would be a brand new record, and I’d be very vocal about the fact, ‘Hey, we never did the nostalgic trips, but we are playing the full record, but it’s a brand new album.’ And I remember Nick Cave did the same, if I’m correct. I might be wrong now, but I was so proud of the fact that we don’t need to revisit. We’re not a legacy band. We have current, relevant material, and we are playing the full record of the new album. You can’t f**k with that. That was very arrogant of me, thinking and saying that, because eventually I got to the point that I started to be liking those revisits, those sentimental trips, so to say. So, bands that I’m friends with, I was very critical to what they did back then, but they do it now, but I’m doing it now,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Speaking about which albums could actually work in that format, Nergal went through the catalogue title by title and drew a hard line at the band’s 2002 record.
“We might do something like that with Behemoth, but after this upcoming tour, we’re just taking time off, and I don’t know when and how we’re coming back,” he continued. “So I don’t know if there’s any time to do it in the future. But there are records in our discography that I would gladly revisit, like Demigod. Every now and then, now I go back and listen, start to finish, albums, and Demigod is one of those records that could be played and could even gain more when performed live. Apostasy, no. Evangelium, yes. The Satanist, but we did that [already]. And Zos Kia Cultus, I’m just saying no. But that’s my gut feeling. It is doable, but my immediate answer is no. Because I did that. I went to revisit Zos Kia Cultus lately just to see if there’s any deep cuts there that I can take out and just give it a new life and just perform it. And there’s always something in the song that I’m, like, ‘I so don’t wanna go there. I so don’t wanna play that. It’s just not me.'”
The two titles he shortened refer to The Apostasy, released in July 2007, and Evangelion, released in 2009. Demigod arrived in 2004 and remains one of the band’s most widely cited records, while Zos Kia Cultus (Here And Beyond) came out in 2002.
Nergal framed the whole question around a standard he set for himself early on, and named three outside albums as his benchmarks.
“I’d say that my main goal with most of our records, when I became a musician, artist, was to make very compact albums. What is compact? Like a very coherent album. [Judas Priest‘s] Painkiller is a coherent album. [Metallica‘s] Master Of Puppets is a coherent album. [Slayer‘s] Reign In Blood is a coherent album. So I think Demigod is a coherent record. Zos Kia Cultus is not. Thelema.6 is not. The Satanist is. The S**t Ov God is. The previous two, I’m not sure.”
He continued: “I always try to make a record that’s gonna be — it’s gonna be wholesome, and when you play it, it’s just constant flow, and it’s a journey that we take you to join. And some records have those [moments where I go], ‘Ugh, nah. No, I don’t feel that.’ But, obviously, it might change at some point. I don’t know. If you ask me my opinion now, certain records to revisit, yes. Most of them, no.”
The two albums he declined to rate are I Loved You At Your Darkest (2018) and Opvs Contra Natvram (2022), the pair that preceded The S**t Ov God. Thelema.6 dates from 2000.
The 2026 project sees Nergal performing Sventevith (Storming Near The Baltic) in full without his Behemoth bandmates, backed instead by Icelandic black metal act Misþyrming. It marks 30 years since the 1995 debut and is the first time the record has been staged as a complete conceptual work. The run covers selected European festivals, including Beyond The Gates in Bergen, Norway, and reached Hellsinki Metal Festival in Helsinki on 8 August.
The time off Nergal refers to is already scheduled. Behemoth wrap their year with a 16-date European co-headlining tour alongside Dimmu Borgir and Dark Funeral in October, after which the band go inactive for at least a year with no live dates planned. Nergal has said the break is about recovering rather than any dispute, and that he has cut back on interviews as part of it.
That pause will not be silent. I, Scvlptor lands on 4 September 2026 through Massacre Records physically and Nuclear Blast digitally, collecting eight previously unreleased tracks, seven studio recordings and one live cut. Nergal has described it as closer to a compilation than a conventional album, which leaves The S**t Ov God, released 9 May 2025 via Nuclear Blast, as the band’s most recent studio full-length.
Behemoth formed in Gdańsk in 1991 and now consist of Nergal, drummer Inferno, bassist Orion and guitarist Seth. The band began in raw black metal before absorbing death metal into the sound that carried albums such as Demigod, The Apostasy, Evangelion and 2014’s The Satanist to an international audience.
