Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski has always been a mercurial figure. As the front man of Polish black / death metal institution Behemoth he has successfully combined musical savagery with piercing intelligence and a detailed knowledge of history, whilst off-stage he has deftly navigated his way through the potential minefield of perceived credibility coaching on the Polish edition of The Voice and even promoting a brand of energy drink without compromising his artistic integrity. It is arguable that Nergal’s strength and remarkable career has come from simply ignoring the perceptions of others and his continuing disdain for following a straight trajectory has manifested itself with the development of a side-project entitled Me and That Man which eschews the fire and brimstone theatricality of Behemoth for an obsidian strain of folk-infused blues that has much in common with latter-day Johnny Cash, Nick Cave and Danzig. Formed with John Porter, an English musician who has long lived in Poland, Me and That Man is not an easy ride and it will not necessarily find favour with those whose tastes run solely to the extreme, but it is a fascinating journey into unexpected musical pastures from a talented, multi-faceted artist.
From the moment that jangling guitar of ‘My Church is black’ emerges, John and Nergal evoke imagery reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Vampires, all frontier towns bereft of life and polluted with an ill-defined strain of evil that permeates the surroundings. The haunting strains of the harmonica add an air of melancholy whilst the barely tuned guitars growl and blaze with barely restrained harmonic distortion, all of which crafts an arid ambience that persists across the thirteen tracks on offer. Interestingly, a Polish language version is also available and it is fascinating to see how that haunting, romantic language adds a different and unexpected dimension to the track. Check the video out below. ‘Nightride’ is best described as Nick Cave covering Chris Rea with Nergal’s dusty vocal set to a bluesy stomp that is strangely addictive. The same taut, rhythmic element is retained on ‘on the road’, one of the album’s lengthiest, and bluesiest, tracks. It’s a powerful blues, however, shorn of a tidy production and left out in the dirt until the edges are torn and dried blood is streaked across its features. With tribal percussion and gang vocals, it’s easy to imagine vagabonds riding the railroad in an era long before mobile phones and technology stripped the romance from existence.
Set to an eerie loop, ‘cross my heart and hope to die’ is a beautiful acoustic work in which Nergal sounds so uncannily like Nick Cave it’s tempting to check the sleeve notes to see if there are any guest appearances on the record. Reminiscent of ‘the weeping song’, (from 1990’s ‘the good son’), ‘cross my heart…’ is music stripped to the very bone and it is almost a relief when the dense throb of ‘Better the devil I know’ introduces gritty guitars, a merciless beat and even a touch of violin to temper the otherwise shockingly nihilistic vein that runs through the music. Another acoustic song, ‘Of sirens, vampires and lovers’ is the sort of campfire story-telling that predominates in the hills of the Swietokrzyskie where teenagers still gather in the darkness with guitars and illicit alcohol as part of their rite of passage. It’s a gorgeous piece of music and redolent of the sweeping, oft-tragic history of Nergal’s homeland.
Black clad boots on a dusty highway spring to mind on the hell-bound blues of ‘Magdalene’ but it’s the gritty guitar work and snarled vocals of ‘Love and death’ that sets the adrenalin coursing through the veins on the second half of this LP. Still stripped back to basics, the gruelling beat and cruelly distorted guitar draw upon the naked power of Iggy’s stooges. In contrast, ‘One day’ is an unexpectedly sweet song that heads back to the fifties for inspiration. As its name implies, ‘Shaman Blues’ is imbued with a dark magic, set against a heart-beat and scented with old whiskey and sweat. Similarly, ‘Voodoo queen’ is a swampy track that is straight out of New Orleans with its sensual mysticism. ‘Get outta this place’ is pure old school rock ‘n’ roll that does much to recall the Animals’ song of a similar name with its fiery lead work and addictive chorus, which leaves only the melancholy ‘ain’t much loving’ to conclude the album and, unexpectedly, it edges into Danzig territory with its gothic sensibility and sanguine vocals traded between Nergal and John. It brings the album to a pleasingly desolate end and the echoing, gun-shot percussion leaves the listener with the impression of having presided over a bloody gun battle in a western street, the corpses left twitching on the blood-soaked ground as the music dissipates.
Wisely kept short, ‘Songs of love and death’ is a densely-packed album that channels so much emotion over the course of its thirteen tracks that it is hard to absorb in one sitting. This is old-fashioned record making with the production kept to a minimum and the songs left to stand or fall upon the performances of the musicians. Often digging into a dusty Americana, the album is at its best when Nergal and John evoke the vast open plains of Poland, for it is a landscape steeped in blood and teeming with rich folklore. Every song, however, is a richly textured example of how music can be used to evoke a vivid atmosphere that only serves to fire the imagination. This may appear an unexpected release from Nergal, but it provides a compelling counterpoint to the extremity of Behemoth and offers a more intimate glimpse, perhaps, of the artistic muse that fires him. More than a side project, Me and that Man is a compelling musical journey that deserves to be heard in isolation from Nergal’s work in Behemoth and judged upon its own, very fine, merits. 9
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