Being Nergal

When Adam Nergal Darski turned 39, he threw the party to end all parties. “It was huge,” he says proudly.

“People still talk about it now.” By contrast, for his 40th birthday he turned off his phone and took off on a three-day romantic holiday in Rome with his girlfriend.

“Turning 40 was not a big deal,” he says. “I’m not really attached to numbers. Honestly, we try to give meaning to this life. Is there any? I don’t think so. You live and then you die.”

It’s a pessimistic view – or maybe just a realistic one. It could certainly explain why Nergal, now 42, has crammed a lot of things into his time on the planet. As the driving force behind Behemoth, he’s become a figurehead for modern extreme metal. He’s a businessman, a TV personality and a cancer survivor (he legally changed his middle name to Nergal after being given the all-clear following a battle with leukaemia in the early 10s).

He’s a figure of controversy, too. Nergal’s beliefs and actions – individualistic in his eyes, sometimes problematic to others – have landed him in various degrees of trouble at different points in