By Jan Błaszczak
Only one Polish band has ever had an album reach the top 50 of the US Billboard 200 chart. But if you asked most Poles who it was, they probably would not know.
The answer is Behemoth, who hail from a Polish extreme metal scene that has achieved great international success despite relatively little mainstream attention and has become one of the most significant ambassadors of Polish culture abroad despite, unlike many other cultural exports, receiving no support from public institutions.
Decades of success
What is more, their success seems impervious to the changes taking place around them: economic, political, and social. So much so that the streak of success of Polish death-metal and black-metal bands seems to be one of the few constants in Poland’s post-1989 history, which is otherwise full of twists and turns.
The international relevance of Polish metal in fact goes back even further, into the pre-1989 communist era. Its crucial first chapter was written by the Olsztyn-based band Vader, which is celebrating its 40th birthday this year.
Vader performing in Germany (S. Bollman/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0)
The band toured western Europe and the United States alongside respected British and American death-metal groups such as Deicide and Bolt Thrower. With today’s thresholds, it would have celebrated a few gold records.
Vader signed a contract with British label Earache records, a phonographic giant at the time that had metal legends such as Morbid Angel, Entombed, Napalm Death and Godflesh in its catalogue. The band’s music videos regularly appeared on MTV.
As well as its commercial success, Vader helped foster a new generation of Polish metal musicians. “This is the power of a success story,” says Jarek Szubrycht, author of the recently published book on the history of Polish metal.
“Adam Małysz came out of nowhere,” he notes, referring to Poland’s four-time World Cup-winning ski jumper, but after his success “we soon had a whole team of talented ski jumpers”.
Poland was gripped by "Małyszmania" in the early 2000s, as millions followed the exploits of Adam Małysz.
His success not only made ski jumping a national obsession, it helped heal the complexes of a country searching for a sense of its place in the world https://t.co/EdpKaKkDGf
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) January 13, 2022
A similar process happened on the metal scene, says Szubrycht. For musicians performing in “the community rooms of our small towns”, the success of Vader gave them “the message: it is possible”.
Even back then, he adds, Vader’s international success was exceptional for Poland’s music industry as a whole: “none of their peers, from pop through rock to metal, came even close to their achievements.”
A behemoth rises
One band that not only built on Vader’s success but surpassed it is Behemoth, which was formed in 1991. Led by Adam “Nergal” Darski, the group drew more heavily on black metal, with their lyrics rooted in paganism and a deep aversion to the Catholic church.
Behemoth quickly gained recognition in the metal community, building greater success with each subsequent record. In 2014, their album The Satanist saw Behemoth become one of the most popular and highly regarded bands within the metal genre, debuting at number 34 on the Billboard 200 chart.
The record received spectacular reviews not only in the music media, with The Guardian calling it “a flawless paean to free will and the human spirit”. In spring 2014, Behemoth headlined a North American tour consisting of 23 concerts across the US and Canada.
Metal musician Nergal, frontman of @BehemothBand, has been fined by a Polish court for the crime of offending religious feelings after he posted a photo of a foot stepping on the Virgin Mary.
He has contested the ruling, meaning the case proceeds to trial https://t.co/Xa6AKQNxqT
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 16, 2021
Cooperation, not competition
Behemoth and Vader have not only been ambassadors for the Polish music scene, they have also promoted other, less recognised bands from their country by inviting them to join tours and namechecking them in interviews and on social media.
“It was a young scene; we all started around the same time, so we were also very close to each other,” recalls Szubrycht, who was in a band called Lux Occulta in the 1990s.
“As well as the ‘do it yourself’ approach, which we borrowed from the punks, we always followed the catchphrase: ‘cooperation, not competition’. This attitude has been the strength of the Polish metal scene from the beginning.”
Dominic Athanassiou, the owner of a PR agency that has been working with the metal genre for years, agrees.
“You can see the solidarity of this scene,” he says, noting that Behemoth supported up-and-coming Polish band Mgła by inviting them to tour in Europe. Mgła themselves later brought another rising group, Mord’A’Stigmata, on an international tour.
But the changing music market in the 21st century has also made it easier for Polish bands to reach global audiences even without tours or endorsements. Athanassiou notes how positively Furia, another Polish band, have been received despite singing in Polish and with songs deeply rooted in Polish culture, literature and history.
“You might think this would be a barrier, but it allows the artists to express themselves fully, and authenticity is in demand among listeners of extreme metal,” he says.
Furia’s 2016 record Księżyc milczy luty received enthusiastic reviews and appeared in the best albums of the year lists. Szubrycht also notes that the success of Mgła, shows that status on the music scene is no longer associated with a big recording contract. Despite countless possibilities, Mgła has been releasing albums independently.
Mgła performing in Germany (Septikphoto/Flickr, under CC BY 2.0)
“When I was at the Inferno festival in Oslo last year, the bastion of black metal, the band I saw the most t-shirts of, apart from the headliners of the festival, was Mgła,” recalls Szubrycht. “And they didn’t even perform at this event!”
One of the reasons for Mgła’s popularity was the band’s performance at the Brutal Assault festival in the Czech Republic in 2019. After the concert, a recording from a drum cam featuring Darkside, the band’s drummer, appeared on Youtube.
His extraordinary technical skills – combining murderous footwork with cymbal handling that one would normally associate with a vibraphonist – went viral. As a result, various clips where professional drummers reacted in real-time to Darkside’s spectacular performance flooded the Internet.
Success despite – or perhaps because of – a lack of state support
While Polish metal has made a name for itself abroad, it is still impossible to speak of a “Polish sound” or a “Polish school” of metal in the sense that applies to Swedish death metal or Norwegian black metal.
In those cases, the groundbreaking records were followed by journalists and politicians aware that something important was happening in their national culture. But that has not been the case in Poland.
Norway’s ambassador to Poland, Anders Eide, notes that even his government’s training programme for diplomats has for the last decade included knowledge of Norwegian black metal as an example of Norwegian culture. In 2014, the Norwegian embassy in Warsaw co-organised an exhibition on the Norwegian metal scene.
“We intended to encourage the discovery of Norwegian metal music as part of the culture, but also to present black metal artists”, explains Eide. “They are not only talented musicians but, above all, ordinary people: devoted parents, scientists, teachers, mountain lovers.”
Eide points out that this has economic as well as cultural benefits for Norway, including “thousands of metal tourists coming to Norway every year, for example to the extreme metal festival Inferno in Oslo, or just to travel around the country and experience Norwegian nature and culture”.
He also notes that the success of the music scene has encouraged “many students from other countries…[to] educate themselves in the Norwegian language”.
Polish metal has never been able to count on similar support. In fact, Behemoth and its frontman, Nergal, have faced a number of court cases in Poland for alleged violations of the country’s strict “insult laws” that criminalise offensive language and behaviour aimed at religion and national symbols. Prosecution has often been endorsed by figures and groups linked to the conservative ruling camp.
Some may wonder if Polish metal’s influence could have been even more profound if it had been perceived as a national treasure. But perhaps the way things are has been better for Polish metal, which thrives on its outsider status.
Main image credit: Marcin Stepien / Agencja Wyborcza.pl
