Nine days ago, Poland death/black metal band, Behemoth, released the EP Ezkaton, which contains the ripping new studio track “Quadosh,” covers of The Ramones’ “I’m Not Jesus” and Master Hammer’s “Jama Pekel,” and three live songs. Check it out for sure, but first check out frontman Nergal’s guest blog about music videos, Behemoth’s victory at a Polish video festival and the force that kept them from winning the grand prize:
Yesterday, I was asked by some local journalist if there’s any sense in producing music videos nowadays. I said yes. I truly think there still is a massive demand within the metal genre, and especially within the extreme metal genre where theatricals play such a huge role in the whole concept.
Kids love it, and we love it and need it to complete our vision. And even though the mainstream media ignores it all the way, we still keep on making better and bigger videos ’cause we believe there’s a reason and a massive need for doing it. Earlier this year, I came up with this insane idea of the video for one of the songs from our last album, “The Apostasy.”
“At the Left Hand Ov God” was meant to be our most splendorous, high profile, big budget clip… and at the same time, still disturbing and blasphemous in many ways. I managed to convince our management and new label, Metal Blade, to invest some serious money in making my ideas flesh and materializing the whole project. Shortly after, we found this company in Poland, Grupa 13, that made the impossible possible! Two days of shooting, 20 people involved, fancy decorations, fires, actors, models… We even hired a makeup guy who worked on the movie “Black Hawk Dawn.” It was kind of risky to pick a song that was over five minutes long for the music video, but we knew it was going to be a historic, epic thing and if we did it right, we knew people would freak out.
A month later, I got first edits and I was already blown away. This video met our demands and everyone including our labelmates fell in love with this clip. MTV gave it a massive push which I think was great. The funny thing is that although they censored our previous clips for no logical reasons, this time, apart from some nude scenes, they were cool with all the burning crosses, churches, the scene where I was tearing the bible to pieces… Maybe it’s a wind of change in MTV’s policy or maybe someone missed the whole thing, haha.
Anyway, we got a lot of positive feedback from all over the world. A few months ago we found out that the video was nominated [in a big Polish video festival] for a Yach prize for music videos in three categories: Montage, Direction and Grand Prix. Wow! I was blown away. And even though I was more than aware of all the artistic and commercial values of this clip, I was realistic, too. We’ve gotten a lot of s–t in our own country throughout the years for being who we are. I wasn’t expecting much until [bassist] Orion and I attended the Yach film gala yesterday. And guess what? We won the Yach prize in the “montage” category, which made us proud. Then, today I got this weird phone call from the producer of our video telling me something he heard at yesterday’s after party.
He was told by the main guy who started this whole festival that Behemoth had also won the Grand Prix for “At the Left Hand Ov God” until some priest found out and started boycotting the event and putting pressure on them to change their decision. Since the festival’s Grand Prix is sponsored by the city’s mayor, they had to give up and give it to someone else. Am I pissed off? Yes I am. Am I surprised? Not really. As I said above, we’re used to this kind of attitude towards the band. The only sad thing is that it’s not the quality and art that’s awarded at festivals like that but the political correctness.
