NERGAL NOW HAS MORE TIME TO CONCENTRATE ON BEHEMOTH
When word got out that Nergal from Behemoth was going to be a judge on the Polish version of the reality show The Voice, a lot of metal fans were, well, baffled. And not just because Nergal is apparently an honest-to-Satan rock star in Poland (whereas, like I was saying on Twitter last week, metal really has no rock stars anymore in this country) — just because the idea of someone so bad-assed participating in something so, well, um, I hate to say it but “lame,” was just kind of a head-scratcher.
But oh hey guess what? Poland continues to be an awful fucking place for freedom of expression, and following more than eighteen months of religious controversy involving Nergal and right wing conservatives in his native country, he has now been fired from from the aforementioned Voice program. Sez Metal Underground:
“Polands’s State TV has announced that they have removed Behemoth frontman Nergal, aka Adam Darski, from it’s talent show, The Voice Of Poland, after much pressure from the Catholic Church, claining that they will not replace him with another ‘death metal rock star.’
Of course, I have no idea how Nergal himself feels about this — he may be tired of all this bullshit, and he may be bummed that he’s now gonna lose out on what I imagine is a pretty substantial paycheck — but at the risk of being insensitive, I’d like to assert that this is great news, for the following reasons:
- The more time Nergal has to devote to making his art, the better.
- These idiots who fired him, like so many idiots before them, probably don’t even realize that they’ve just handed him a ton of more free publicity, and, consequently, very likely just encouraged who-knows how many more rebellious, disenfranchised adolescents to become Behemoth fans.
In other words: firing Nergal will have the exact opposite effect they intended it to. And if they don’t believe me, they should ask every politician or parent who tried to shut down Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Marilyn Manson, or, hey, Elvis fucking Presley how that worked out for them.
-AR
