The man known as Nergal has not had the easiest journey. Despite fronting Behemoth, one of most critically and commercially successful blackened death metal bands of all time, Nergal has encountered many obstacles. If facing controversy in his home country of Poland due to the satanic nature of Behemoth’s lyrics wasn’t enough, he was diagnosed with leukemia back in 2010.
This would have taken the heart of many, but through determination and the will to fight, Nergal stood strong. Behemoth released their groundbreaking album, ‘The Satanist’, and continued their meteoric rise. But that wasn’t enough. There was void he need to fill, leading to the creation of Me And That Man.
For this project, Nergal has teamed up with Polish/British musician John Porter to expose a side of him that many people would never have imagined existed on ‘Song of Love and Death’. This is a world away from Behemoth, yet as with everything Nergal does, his heart and soul as a free artist has been poured directly into it. It travels through alt-country, neo-folk and post-punk dirge, across barren wasteland and dusty plains, all the while paying homage to the journeyman musicians of yesteryear.
The smoky haze that permeates ‘Songs of Love and Death’ shrouds tales of anti-religion, lost love, despair, disenchantment, and introspective views of chaos and creation. The hypnotic twang of ‘My Church Is Black’ finds Nergal addressing the alter of darkness to which he prays, while the foot-stomping rhythm of ‘Nightride’ and ‘On The Road’ veer into classic country rock ‘n’ roll found in the backrooms of lonely bars.
No two songs sound the same on ‘Songs of Love and Death’, giving it a more immediate feel than that of your average singer songwriter. The desert-dry vocal approach of Nergal weaves through each track as he bares his blackened soul, keeping the album cohesive. As the album moves into dissonant post-punk with ‘Better The Devil I Know’, his story telling approach finds him communing with the dark lord he finds solace in, whereas ‘One Day’ takes a twist into brighter, uplifting territory with an country-punk shimmer.
What Me And That Man really shows is that Nergal is in fact human after all. Behind the pageantry and theatrics of Behemoth lies a man, who like many others, feels, hurts, and bleeds like any other. He may not be searching for salvation, which he laments on ‘Cross My Heart and Hope To Die’, but this is certainly a cathartic release. Like any record with a deep personal attachment, ‘Songs of Love and Death’ is brutally honest, musically challenging, and filled with intense emotion to the core.
GLEN BUSHELL