Nergal, known to his mother as Adam Darski, is the subject of a book – first published in Polish in 2012 – following his successful battle with leukaemia. With the book finally getting an English translation – overseen by noted metal scribe Mark Eglinton and complete with foreword from Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe – Hammer spoke to Nergal about Confessions Of A Heretic.
How did the book come about?
“I had this urgent need to define this period of life. The fact that I was released from hospital, and what I went through, made me reflect on my life a lot, and digest things again, and talk them through, and eventually spit them out. I found that the form of in-depth, long interview would be the perfect form of expression.”/o:p
Aren’t you a bit young for an autobiography?
“Some people say, ‘I was 35, and maybe writing a biography, as a living human being at the age of 35, is a bit of a forethought,’ but I underline that this is not a biography, it’s an in-depth, 400-pages-long interview with a biographical touch to it. It came from a deep need to share some of my thoughts and ideas and observations – and what I went through – with the world.”
How did the interview process work?
“They [authors Krzysztof Azarewicz and Piotr Weltrowski] were the chroniclers. It wasn’t ever like we would meet in a café and they would ask me questions. The way we would do it, one of them would just come over to my place, and I would be making coffee, and then all of a sudden I’d start talking and sometimes I wasn’t even aware of the fact that the tape was on, and I’d just be talking, and they’d provoke me, ask me some other questions. I’d drift away with topics.”
Did your friendship with the authors help when talking about the deeply personal subjects you go into?
“Yeah, but I’m an extrovert. That’s who I am, how I am. So I didn’t really have any problems going through the intimate, emotional stuff. I break all taboos – there are no taboos in my life, and I can go through anything and talk about it. That’s who I am.”
CONFESSIONS OF A HERETIC IS OUT NOW VIA JAWBONE PRESS/o:p