BEHEMOTH's NERGAL: 'Ninety-Nine Percent' Of Metal Records Nowadays 'Sound Robotic'

In a recent interview with Australia's Heavy, Adam "Nergal" Darski of Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH spoke about his desire to make the band's 12th studio album, "Opvs Contra Natvram", "sound very organic", especially when compared to its predecessor, 2018's "I Loved You At Your Darkest". He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Every band these days, you talk to every band, and every band — literally — heavy metal band, thrash, death, whatever, says, 'Oh, we managed to get that organic sound.' And then I go and listen to those records and I'm, like, 'There's nothing organic about this record.' Ninety-nine percent of the records, they sound robotic. Every fucking click, every kick, every snare drum, every part of the record is exactly the same. It's not organic. 'Organic' is when music fluctuates, when there's dynamics, when it goes up and down. That's why we tapped Joe Barresi [to mix the LP]. You know him for his work with NINE INCH NAILS, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, MONSTER MAGNET and a lot of rock bands. SLIPKNOT… Basically, rock bands, mainstream bands. And he does this old-school mixing. He doesn't use Pro Tools. I mean, he uses Pro Tools, but then, when he's done with one song, he just pulls all the knobs down and starts from scratch. You go, 'Hey, but I wanted to do some tweaks in the previous one.' 'Sorry, it's done.' You've got to pay for everything again. So [when] it's done, it's done. You don't endlessly go and correct that, which is beautiful. Twenty, thirty years ago, it was done that way."

He continued: "These days, you can fucking perfect things to the point that you cannot fucking listen to it, because the perfection makes things boring, imperfect and a whole lot uninteresting. Live, it's not perfect; that's why it's so fucking exciting. So why make things that are just so fucking polished? I don't get it, especially in extreme metal music. It's gotta be fucking weird, it's gotta be dangerous. Where is the danger factor? So I really wanted to bring the danger factor back to our music. It was present, but maybe this is the record [where] it's the most present ever."

Released last September, "Opvs Contra Natvram" was previously described in a press release as "a stark reminder of the rebellion, individuality, and unflinching self-expression that BEHEMOTH's phenomenal work imbues, shaped by a literary worldview."

"Opvs Contra Natvram" features twin cover art available in both black and white and was released in an array of physical formats designed by Bartek Rogalewicz (Lodge.Black).