In a new interview with Finland’s Radio Rock, guitarist Sven “Silenoz” Kopperud of Norwegian symphonic black metallers DIMMU BORGIR and Adam “Nergal” Darski of Polish extreme metallers BEHEMOTH, who are currently on the road in Europe as part of the “In League With Satan” co-headline tour, were asked if they have ever felt pressure to “compromise a little bit” with their music in order to reach a wider audience more quickly. Silenoz responded: “Never. And I think it’s also good that it took a little bit of time to go the steps (and grow the band), because you look at artists that get big overnight for whatever reason. This music is not meant to be for the masses anyway. Metal in general is not. You look at (IRON) MAIDEN and (JUDAS) PRIEST and all the big ones, still they’re not played on mainstream radio. So I think it’s good that it is the way it is, with our kind of music and metal in general.”

Added Nergal: “All I gotta say is that, just look at BEHEMOTH‘s last album’s title, ‘The Shit Ov God’. And that says it all. That’s how unapologetic I’ve always been and how much I cared about what other people think of what I do. I actually reach out to have this title, because I knew there’s no bigger middle finger out there. And I know it’s gonna be so talked about. Then I’m, like, ‘Okay, this is it.’ And so that says how uncompromising I can be. No matter if people like it or not, or they think it’s stupid, it’s this or that, I know what it is. And I stand behind it, period.”

After the interviewer noted that a lot of people love DIMMU BORGIR and BEHEMOTH, but that both bands also have a lot of haters who regularly voice their negative opinions on the Internet, Nergal said: “Well, someone way smarter than me said, ‘Hey, if I’m gonna pay attention to every dog barking at me, I would never make it home.’ That’s exactly how I feel about it. Plus, the other way smarter guy — I believe it was one of the great poets — said like, well, basically if you attract very polarized opinions on your body of work, your body of art, on a creation, it basically proves your honesty. And that’s exactly what it is. You can’t make a record or make a painting expecting, ‘Oh, I hope that everyone will love it.’ Of course, it’s cool if there is more people enjoying what I do, because I wanna go on tour and I don’t wanna play to empty places. And fortunately, for me, there’s probably… I’m not gonna guess, there’s 70/30 or 60/40, but judging by the numbers attending on this tour, I think we both must be doing something right. But also these days, it’s, like whenever they say there’s so much like criticism and hate, whenever they ask me, ‘Okay, so how much of that hate you meet on daily basis?’ None. Because people are only brave behind their keyboards. They never approach you saying, ‘Oh, you fucking sellout,’ or, ‘You wimp.’ They never do that. So if you don’t have balls to come and say things like that in my face, you can basically fuck off.”

Silenoz concurred, saying: “Simple as that. And another thing too, which is indifference. What’s the fun about that? You want people either loving you or hating you. That’s how you know that you’re doing something right. And we are here; they’re not. So, that speaks for itself.”