"Adrenaline helps us to survive", said BESATT just before their Latin American Tour

A new devastating tour of BESATT in Latin America is imminent, so we talked with Baldaroh and Colossus about this three-week tour, how they built the setlist, and many other issues like their unique experience on the communist island of CUBA, how the things going on about politics in Poland, and much more here:

How do you manage that because you have a well like normal jobs and then it’s really hard to get and to tour all over the world?

Colossus: It’s a question we are asked a lot, how can we manage our daily job, our daily life playing shows, touring, the big tour we must cover with our vacations because in our jobs we have a certain number of days of free time for ourselves and usually it gets together and the small gigs are usually managed in the weekend, Saturday, Sunday, maybe Friday night, so it’s not a big problem for us to get ourselves after work, put the gear in the bus and go play somewhere, of course when we play a bit farther, like France, Belgium or Spain, we must manage many more of our free time to get there, play and come back.

Beldaroh: if you play in Germany or Czech Republic, of course, you can start Saturday morning on the bus, where we live to the club, you can fly, sleep in the hotel, and the next day come back home.

Colossus: then of course, if you love what you are doing you don’t find excuses for not doing this, but you only find solutions to do it, because it´s our passion, there are no limits.

You announced the Latin American tour two years ago, so I want to know what happened these years?

Beldaroh: yes, but covid comes and we had to change the plan, it’s everything was crowded.

Colossus: mostly the limitations, the flights, the restrictions of gathering people, so everything was canceled, and it was more difficult to manage a concert live in the pandemic than now.

We are very anxious about that. How do you manage now with that?

Colossus: originally the tour had to take place in May but we must postpone it to the end of June and the main dates are in July so we start in Mexico, it will be 30th of June and then the last gig I remember is in Argentina on 17th of July it’s a Sunday. It’s the first tour with such a big date she’ll do for us, I check it, mostly day after day we will be playing gig and transportation mainly by planes, so it will be no time for sightseeing, no time for tourism, not this time.

Beldaroh: but we go to Latin America to play shows not for tourism, not to buy gifts.

That’s good news for us and for you because you love to play so it’s okay for us also.

Colossus: the most exhausting part of this extremely long tour I think will be traveling, you must go to the airport do this job, pack your bags check out, check-in go to the plane, come back from the plane, all the stuff that personally for me is most exhausting with all the touring, I don’t care if you will be traveling by bus I like traveling by bus, but this time the distance between each gig is too far, it’s too far apart so bus this time will not be possible to travel by.

Not at all, the distances and also the roads are some big problems here.

It’s not so easy to travel when you must play every night.

Have you ever been to Argentina or in South America, as a band or by yourself?

Beldaroh: no, it´s our first time ever to Argentina.

Colossus: for me is the first time either.

Beldaroh: we made some tours in Latin America, five times in Brazil, two times in Colombia, two in Mexico, and one time we were improving Cuba, but not in Argentina.

How was that experience in Cuba? It´s a particular country.

Colossus: Yes, it’s a small island in the Caribbean Sea, it’s very maybe not neglected but everything is separate, like China, they have a great China wall, but Cuba has an ocean and they have everything working at its own life there, of course, they have touristic cities like La Habana or Varadero, but we saw Cuba from the kitchen we can say, not like any tourists from Europe or other countries, if there are tourists from Germany, for example, they will put you on the place that you can see all the things which they want you to see, everything is beautiful, everything is nice clean, but we saw everything from the backstage, these little streets the people, for me personally it was like seeing Poland 40 years ago because Cuba is still communistic country, you see the aftermath of the communist regime, you see a lot of Russian cars, Lada cars, polish cars, old American cars, the old chevy my favorite, do you know the film the horror movie Christine? Those types of cars you see all around, traveling in time so you are in the 21st century like the 2022 but you see all the things around, and you think “man it’s the 60s or 70s here”.

That’s awesome well, at least you had the real experience to feel how the common people live.

Colossus: they have internet but not that kind of access that we do, they have to stand in lines to buy the special card here for your phone and you have only 16 or two megabytes of the access to the internet two megabytes and you only can get it in special places you have in the time square and it’s a sign that says here you can have internet and lots of people with their cell phones and chatting only because two megabytes of the internet is nothing, you download the mp3 and I run out of internet, so and we saw that many people ask us that “do you have any CD´s from Europe bands” and we said “no, sorry because it’s too much luggage for us to handle”, so they want to if somebody does not bring from this United States mostly from the U.S. any music, so they will not have like we have music stores you go there buy a CD you want from the band you want or you can download anything from I’m doing heavy metal to black metal what do you wish? they do not have.

It’s because there’s no freedom at all, you were talking about Russian cars and stuff. How is the politics right now in Poland with this war?

Beldaroh: the war is near our border, with Ukraine, so of course, we have feelings, because maybe the next country will be Poland.

Is that the feeling that your country going to be the next?

Colossus: no, I didn’t think so, because if the next movement from the Russian side will be attacking Poland, it will be the world conflict, because I can presume that United States and other countries, mostly, United States just waiting for the Russian take the wrong step in this conflict, Putin is the creator of this, as for now we have about three million refugees from Ukraine in this moment in Poland, they are living with our polish families in this town right now we have a couple of thousands and we’re trying to give them a bit of normal life, but we know that they were living there in Ukraine, they have their own jobs, own businesses, kids were going to school, but now everything ended, they are here so we try to give them what we can do best, just they could feel like home, trying to be supportive for them, but war is never a good thing never, because in one side there will be always somebody who will earn a lot of money from this, on the other side I think thousands of innocent citizens dying.

For nothing.

Colossus: for nothing…or for something, because somebody will be getting a lot of money from this, dirty politics, and it’s my thought about this conflict because we don’t know every and anything everything for people like us will, all can only take our information from the news what they will show us, but I think they are not showing us everything.

You must take care with the information from the media.

Yeah, exactly.

So now talk a little bit about music how do you manage your creative process, and how does it work?

Beldaroh: Maybe 10 years with this lineup, I remember when we started times the lineup was changed many times, sometimes men didn´t have time to practice, sometimes people are immigration to another country like Norway, because in always a better life, many issues, now we have 10 years playing with this lineup, it’s a very good lineup, it´s like a family, we spend many tours, many gigs, many times…

Colossus: ….and we hate each haha.

Beldaroh: this last album we made it on the rehearsal, we meet all together in the rehearsal and composed songs on the rehearsal in this time.

Colossus: before maybe we all write some riffs, some ideas and then bring on the rehearsal and then we just work on those ideas, but sometimes just didn’t work out as it’s supposed to because I was playing some riffs know Saturday night, drink beer and I said “oh man it’s a great idea I must to show the guys”, and Monday morning I bring this riff to the rehearsal room, play in front of the guys like look at this listen to this riff it’s a real killer and guys yeah it’s good but you can do better. And this time we just think that all our music was kind of experiment, because everything we developed in music or any musical idea, was created during the rehearsal so everyone could, at the time, say what do they think about this piece of music or the riff or idea for the composition.

So, it’s a very democratic process.

Colossus: Yes, we are democratic band, other thing is that every one of us are not a professional musician, but everyone has a bit of idea how music works, how the element of music and the law of music works, which you can put together with what mode scale or something like this major or minor things, but mostly we can put our intuition to take the leap with the compositions we are playing something and we are listening to, this is good, this is shit, don’t though oh this is great, every one of us have our own music taste, our own musical experience, so if you ask separately to each one of us “who is your favorite artist” or “what was your influence” or something like “what were you listening to when you were young”, they were a few things in common, but I can say that we were listening to different music: Rock music, Metal music, Punk, Glam Rock, Heavy Metal, everything, but in the rehearsal room it’s like a process of making a new type of metal with other metals, for example, you take copper and tinkle and you put it in the tunnel and in the end you have totally different type of new material, if you understand what I’m trying to say, there are four of us, everyone is different but in the cauldron with a recipe of our own, what which we cannot tell you right now because it’s our secret, haha, in the end of this process of blending hard work like blacksmith work is also have a hammer anvil and in the dozens of hours of work in the end you have a beautiful piece of art.

Beldaroh: this album took more than the normal time between “Supreme and True at Night” from 2021, to the “Anticross” (2017), four years to compose, because we wanted to do the best of ourselves, and we made some riffs, some are good, some not so fucking great, this method before was faster, but the last method is better for us, this is a longer step but I think it’s better.

Colossus: nobody rushes us, we don’t have any label in which we have a contract, that in five years we must do three albums, we don’t have that, it’s a natural process, if we know we are ready, we do, if we don’t feel to compose anything right now, at this moment, if we don’t have any ideas, we just don’t push it, we have no pressure, because if you push something too far it will be maybe so-so and we do not want that in our music right now, because as Beldaroh said, we could release an album like every two years, but I preferred one good album every four years than a shitty album every year, of course, there are artists that are releasing an album every year like Finland KALMANKANTAJA, they are so full of ideas so they release album twice a year, but it’s not like us.

How about the lyrics, of course, it’s all about Satanists, but there are other issues that you write?

Beldaroh: I write all the lyrics, mainly about satanist, others like antichristian, like demons sometimes, I wrote three concepts’ albums, the first one was “Demonicom” (2009), which every song is about each demon, nine songs, nine demons, the second album was “Tempus Apocalypses” (2011), it is about my vision of the apocalypse, every song talking about the apocalypse, the final concept album was “Nine Sins” (2014), every song is about the sins for the Christians but not for me, like hate it´s not a sin, this is really a needed, it´s normal, it´s instinct.

Colossus: we are telling about you should glorify rather than crucify the things, we are keeping in tight not in ourselves it’s normal because if you would release your wrath on every person you don’t like, you just go to jail, for harassing people, society would just work like that, but the album tells that you should find the proper way to manage this sin to help you go through life, rather than keeping you back, holding you back, I think that that was the issue from that album.

In the next Latin American tour, in some places you´ll play for the first time, you must play a little bit of everything. How many songs do you play from the last album in your shows usually?

Colossus: Unfortunately, not many, from the last album we play only one song, we used to play two.

Beldaroh: the full spectrum of our discography, we must choose songs from the old albums, and songs from the new ones, because we don´t promote the last album, we promote all our music.

Colossus: yeah, exactly from the old stuff to the new stuff, some from the middle because we just cannot skip songs like “Ave Master Lucifer”, everyone knows the chorus from that song so, for us it’s a good song just to hear the audience screaming, of course, we could play our last CD complete from our last album, but for what purpose? We have history, but if we would be the professional band touring all the time in the motion, so you must promote the last album, maybe we could just do that one tour, one year, we play only songs from our last album

Beldaroh: but we are no professional bands like other bands when they record an album the band must promote that album.

Colossus: because the label pushes you to do that, we have free hand we can play whatever we want.

Are you gonna travel with your merchandise?

Colossus: No, merchandise it will be a problem this time because we have very compact luggage, we must take our instruments, our personal belongings like clothes for change, because this time, it will be three weeks of hard part touring so, of course, we bring some CD´s some t-shirts, but it will be not everything.

Beldaroh: no, because every day, another country, I know their money and help, but to change, but it’s another person, we can sell we can’t serve at all I must go to the play it’s impossible.

Colossus: local flight I know that they have very restricted limitations about the luggage, you cannot take everything you want, the weight of the luggage are very limited so even if we can take our merchandise in the international flight, it will be a problem this would be more it’s much expensive, we had to buy extra luggage for our merchandise and in the end, at the local flies from Mexico to, for example, to Colombia it will be a problem for us to take all these merchandise in our luggage we have for us, we have guitars, drummer, we have also our stage equipment, stage clothes, leather, nails, chains, everything is weight, it’s kilograms of course, maybe it’s more important than instruments haha, because in this genre of music instead of playing you must also look like something on the stage, we cannot play an hour with t-shirts or hoodies, like most of the band doing right now, they are arriving at the venue and you saw them in the same exact outfit on the stage, we just cannot accept that.

Of course, you are the same person, but on stage, you’re another character, the makeup, the scenography, and everything is quite important for all the concepts.

Colossus: it’s a cultivating tradition for us, it’s well, it’s a kind of tradition that keeps on going from generation to generation, of course, it’s not like the middle 90s or beginning of the 90s where everything was much more extreme than right now, because some things change like many bands consider themselves as Black Metal bands, they do not use corpse paint, they do not use leather or all the stuff and they just want to change direction and focus on the music-making more complex music, maybe made more melodic music, then they just put aside the concept of the image, there are also bands that keep on going with the true Black Metal spirit and I think we are one of those bands.

But just a few, there’s not much a lot of bands like that, for example, EMPEROR, they are playing albums from at least 20 years ago, nothing new, normal clothes, nothing to do with the old days.

Colossus: yes, normal looking guys I saw that Ihsahn, the leader of EMPEROR resigned from the corpse paint many years ago, I think it’s in the middle 90s

Beldaroh: I don´t like what EMPEROR is now, for me this band doesn’t exist, but plays gigs I think for the money, that´s my opinion, but he is a fan of EMPEROR, haha.

How many bands do you think right now maintain the old spirit of black metal?

Beldaroh: yeah, I still think it’s GORGOROTH, it’s still a pure black matter, he played black metal, feeling Black Metal and he still use corpse paint and everything on the stage,

And ENTHRONED from Belgium, but many bands from Latin America for me are true black metal, I was many times there, bands and fans are crazy like in Europe 10 years ago or 15 years ago, this Black Metal still there, is fantastic, but in Europe now it’s like only music, clean and synthetic, I don’t feel the spirit of this music last time.

Colossus: maybe the new bands have developed very good sound, very good concept of musical approach to the Black Metal, new Black Metal, because I think it’s not the new wave, but the newest wave of Black Metal legacy maybe and new bands, most of them I think they don’t have this philosophy of the old school Black Metal they don’t have the spirit the true, maybe they do not understand the true origins of the genre because Black Metal is just a specific thing it’s more than music, it’s maybe all in old days it would be nice to hold lifestyle, today it’s hard to say about lifestyle because we are in our work, I do not have dark glasses leather jacket or high combat boots, I work in normal outfit when I walk out to see with my friends in a pub, I dress like a metalhead but what I try to say is that the new generation of Black Metal is just the name, it’s only a name and a certain aesthetic in music and that’s all, you cannot they don’t have spirit, they don’t have that flame, that burns inside.

It looks like these fans lost their identity.

Colossus: exactly, is it good, is it bad, I don’t know.

Beldaroh: we have spirit in our music, but we care about this song all music was good, we applaud in the best studios in Poland we try to make our music was better and better, but we still could cultivate old metal lyrics and letters of gigs, makeup, the spirit is very important for us, this is BESATT.

Yeah, it’s like to keep the energy, the flame, or the soul of the main idea of the original Black Metal.

Colossus: we must remember that the father Lucifer is it’s a father of development you cannot stay in one place because he who stands in one place is backing he’s going back you cannot stay in one place it’s the one thing we have to take this Black Metal concept in a new approach maybe in music, we know that we cannot make anything new because everything was done it’s done already, we have all kind of music all kind of Black Metal like music right now, so we don’t want to put new things in our music just to have all, I know does anybody have accordion or harp in Black Metal music no, so we will be the first one, it’s not about that, we are playing what we are feel to play, what we like that’s all, if we want to have fast songs we play fast songs, we compose fast songs, if we want to get more atmospheric, more darker music, we do what we feel in particular moment of composing material that’s all, of course that doesn’t mean that we are beginning to make Death Prog, Death Progressive, Rock or something like technical maybe one day we just late let’s make a fucking progressive technical madness from this band.

Great guys, thank you so much for all this talking, hope that you have a great Latin American tour, try not to get so tired.

Colossus: Adrenaline helps us to survive, adrenaline, beer, maybe some other stuffs haha, I see you in July.

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