IMPERATOR INTERVIEW
(ExcLUSIVE INTERVIEW)
A few months before the start of global pandemic we received news that Imperator, was performing again. Widely acknowledged as the original Polish death metal band, Imperator was formed in the industrial city of Łódź, sometime around September 1983. Cracks were appearing in the Iron Curtain and Western counter-culture began to flourish in the Polish People’s Republic [PRL] as the USSR turned inward. The soundtrack to these years was rock n’ roll, punk, and heavy metal, and its new Polish fans were hungry. Iron Maiden came to Warsaw in 1984. Martial Law was lifted and new, exciting bands were formed en masse.
As the beats of freedom sounded, communist censors struggled to deal with an endless flood of Western music. Tape trading exploded and one trader by the name of Piotr ‘Bariel’ Tomczyk (then around 17) was receiving packages from all over Europe, the United States and countries as far away as Brazil. His criminal appetite for speed and extremity would lead him to form Imperator with Tomasz ‘Adrian’ Śliwiński (drums) and Adam ‘Bonzo’ Kuśmierek (bass), who was soon replaced by Maciej ‘Mefisto’ Dymitrowski (aka Thorgal) in 1985. In an act of pure audacity, the band blagged their way onto the stage at Jarocin, Poland’s biggest alternative music festival. In December that year they released a demo called Endless Sacrifice – the first example of proto-black/death metal in Poland and one that predates the work of fellow pioneers Vader, Xantotol and Pandemonium by almost four years.
Imperator would record another two demos, Deathlive in 1987 and Eternal Might in 1988. Their debut album The Time Before Time was originally marked for release via Deathlike Silence Productions in 1991, the label of Mayhem’s Øystein ‘Euronymous’ Aarseth. The deal fell through and what became ANTIMOSH-002 would go to Burzum, The Time Before Time instead being funded and released by a friend under Nameless Productions. Four years later the band split up and several ill-fated attempts to reform would end in two decades of silence.
Imperator returned to the stage in 2018 after an invitation from Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski to play at Merry Christless, a concert with Behemoth, Batushka and Bölzer in 2018. In an act of apparent vindication, Imperator are now enjoying a new lease of life and have played a series of concerts in Poland and the United States. Through the efforts of Morbid Angle and Cult Never Dies the band will perform in London for the very first time on June 22, 2023. The concert will be held at The Underworld.
Interview with Piotr ‘Bariel’ Tomczyk – founding member, vocalist/guitarist of Imperator.
Conducted by Alex de Moller.
Cult Never Dies: Give us some context of the first days of Imperator. Poland came out of Martial Law in 1983. The prisons were still full, skinheads were starting to appear on the scene and there was a lot of violence – people have told us that Łódź in those days was synonymous with gangs and football violence. How much of that is true and was it a tough place to grow up?
Bariel: “It was pretty grisly. Normally the punks fought metalheads on a regular basis. I remember my first trip to Jarocin festival in 1985 where there was really big-scale violence. I took part in the fights so I remember... it was me and Tomek (Adrian), the guy I founded the band with. He played drums. We told our parents that we were going to his grandma's summer house at the lake. So we went there for a couple of hours, not for two weeks and later on, we just went straight from there to Jarocin. My parents learned about it because my father worked as a driver and he took my mum and said, ‘Oh let's check on our son!’ They went there and I only learned after returning, that they were there and we were already gone. We went to Jarocin, stayed there for a couple of days, then we went to Gdynia. There was like a crew of metalheads there. In 1985 I’d already heard some Iron Angel demos, or the German Poison and some bands from South America, so I already had this correspondence going on. In ‘85 I heard EPs from Sodom, Destruction and other bands for the first time and I said: ‘Wow! This is going in a pretty good direction.’ We had these Imperator logos with the inverted crosses and stuff like ‘Satan is my master’. The folks I hung out with had more like Manowar things, but they were devoted metalheads. We were walking, with say ten of us and somewhere in the distance we saw like 15 punks and there was this rage... it was like a real war! I remember one guy who had pretty long hair. He fell over because they outnumbered us. They burnt his hair and he was severely beaten, taken to hospital – really, there was no joking around. It was fight or flight, just in case anybody doesn't believe it.”
In 1985 you were sharing a rehearsal room with the famous Polish punk band Moskwa [Moscow] right?
“We shared a rehearsal with them for a while. It was like a rivalry because they had a big name, but they played something else. Hardcore punk. I liked to listen to that, all those underground bands like Ratos de Porão, GBH and Discharge. I was keen on it, but then I remembered first that you needed to you know… take a side. So I'd already been very much into ‘black metal’ and the symbolism when I went to Jarocin in 1985 [but] I didn’t actually know how I wanted to play. I knew that I wanted to play fast with these lyrics and [the sound] was emerging. But the fighting and the violence is true, absolutely. That’s true man. And you really couldn’t joke around about it. I even have a paper somewhere… this article about me and Peter from Vader fighting with some punks in Poznan.”
In 1985, you said you were getting into ‘black metal’. Where were you getting this from? Black Metal at the time is like Sodom, Destruction, Venom maybe...
“Mercyful Fate basically also because of the lyrics. I heard some on the radio, like 'Black Funeral'. There were some niche broadcasts, once a week 50 minutes or something and I heard somewhere. It must have been before 1985 or something and I was extremely interested in it. And then in this summer of 1985 when I met those guys from Wrocław, they were at this campsite at Jarocin and they had this portable cassette player and a couple of demos - the first Destruction, Sentence of Death, the first Sodom EP In the Sign of Evil… and also, funnily enough, the first Helloween.”
So you had you had this explosion of music after martial law. Where did it all come from? Are people smuggling in tapes? Are you hearing stuff over radio stations?
“Radio stations, as I said were very limited. I waited for this. It was just like a special hour, three o'clock Monday probably. There were two broadcasts – 50 minutes or maybe one hour or 50 and 40 minutes. So I just cut classes to be at home once a week to listen to it. Basically, they played heavy metal, bands like Tank, Artillery or funny bands that not too many people know of or remember. But... from time to time they played something like Raven or something faster. Once they played Mercyful Fate and the lyrics just you know, fucked me around. Then I quickly started tape-trading and started sending rehearsal tapes to wherever I could. There were two guys in Łódź. They had some relatives or friends in Germany, so they had Metal Hammer or Kerrang! from time to time. In Metal Hammer there was this section like of band [classifieds] So I’d just write to someone and out of ten, two came back and we started exchanging and I got the first Kreator t-shirt and I said: ‘Fuck Yeah!’
How did that stuff get from Germany to Poland?
“That was mailed to me, and here it must be said that normally – I’d estimate that half of it was ‘lost’. They simply stole it. Everything was censored. They opened the mail. They opened the envelopes and packages and took whatever they wanted. Later on there was this tape trading you know, on carbon paper. If somebody sent some [money] you’d say: ‘Please five bucks, but in between carbon paper.’”
You were a prolific tape trader as well we've heard...
“I guess, yes. I was probably one of the first in the country, so yeah it kept me like a couple of steps ahead because I had a band, so I started you know, putting some flyers in and then they said: ‘What? Where? Behind the Iron Curtain? Impossible! What did you say? Black metal, thrash and then death?’ It spread like a virus and we were pretty popular in these underground circles I guess. Tape trading and exchanging fanzines. I literally ran home to get to my PO Box. I had my PO box in 1987. Before that, I had to just use the regular mailbox and it was half open, anybody could just reach in and take whatever they wanted because that was the situation in Poland. When I first got that demo from Poison I said: ‘Wow this is music!! This is great!’”
Let’s go to 1986, that fateful year when you released your Endless Sacrifice demo. That year a lot of good stuff came out of Poland - Kawaleria Szatana by Turbo, 666 by Kat, albums by Moskwa, Siekiera. There's a lot of good releases… but they sound nothing like you.
“It was a coincidence because in this year, we played our first Jarocin show in ‘86. I remember I had spikes like Kerry King that I produced myself and nobody had anything like it. It took two weeks. I guess that we didn't have a proper invitation to play. We went there, and I said: ‘Fuck! We have to play!’ because there wasn't [any] proper music there. We took our guitars, we went and I said: ‘We’re gonna play.’ There were two stages always. The main one had security and militia. But the other stage was also pretty popular. I said: ‘Okay, we’re next.’ ‘What's the name of your band?’ I said: ‘Imperator.’ ‘But I don't see you on here?’ I said ‘Dude. Please check again.’ He asked another guy and I said ‘Okay, it’s us now’ and we just fucking went onto the stage and we played.”
So you scammed your way onto the bill of the biggest alternative music festival in Poland?
“Yeah exactly! They said: ‘Maybe you could come if there’s some time,’ but they answered by mail after we sent our tapes and then said: ‘It’s not good for this year.’ I didn’t want to wait for another year so I said: ‘Guys we’re going and we will play there,’ and we just stormed the stage. You know what Alex, there’s not many people I told that to [laughs]! I did it and we played. People said: ‘Wow, what kind of music is this? This is something that we want to play.’ I remember after we played a couple of tracks, five maybe. There were a couple of people coming backstage. Peter from Vader, I met him on that day probably: ‘Oh shit man, that's fucking good what is it? That’s the music that we want to play!’ Then we hung out a bit with Peter... that was 1986.”
And apart from your exposure at Jarocin you were completely isolated from culture?
“You were! Normally you simply had to live in those years to be ready to go past a Milicja (militia police) guy who would all of a sudden just beat you in the face or kick you, tear your backpatch – that happened to Mefisto my bass player in the street. He got beaten and they tore off his big back patch with beautiful artwork of Imperator, one of the first hand-made artworks. I still have it. Such was life in 1984. I went to see Iron Maiden, 1984 or 86 Powerslave, I don’t remember. I had the inverted cross and they asked me: ‘What is this?’ I said: ‘It’s a cross.’ They said: ‘Why is it so different?’ I said: ‘I don't know I just like it this way.’ He said: ‘Yeah? You dare say that to me? Are you so fucking cheeky?’ Then they put me in this big car and I got beaten, simply.”
We’ve also been told that the first Slayer concert in Poland was absolute mayhem... smashed windows on the trains and metal fans ‘mugging’ each other. Not just like: ‘Give me your money!’ It was: ‘Give me your shirt!’ too!
“That was normal! In Poland it was called ‘kroić’ [Kro-ich] – to cut. Kroić, it means if you're a tailor, you prepare or you cut the material – krojenie [Kro-yen-yie]. It was not ‘stealing’, but there was a [unique] name coined for it. It was a motto of some of the crews from different towns and locations. When people heard that those guys were around, they panicked. There was Szczecin, the most notorious and some other locations. I'm not talking about all the fans from those towns but that would be untrue but shit man. But I was happy that I had already let those underground freaks know – those that stole and mugged others that I am in Imperator, that I’m Bariel and I play and somehow I was never touched. There was like a tornado of krojenie, everybody was stealing, and I was walking past guys saying ‘Who the fuck is this? Look at him! He has this... Oh it’s Bariel Imperator, ah okay, fuck off, leave him.’
Like a Metal Moses!
“Man, literally it was like that very often because of the scarcity of t-shirts, leather jackets those brazylijkas [brazi-lika – Łódźian slang for a leather jacket, worn Brazilian style], pins, buttons, whatever you had on you. Not to mention bullet belts, patches – everything was stolen. ‘Undress! Undress you fucker!’ I heard and I saw it very often [laughs].”
So let’s talk about when you went from fan to a performer. Was there an album that really pushed you over the edge?
“War and Pain!”
Voivod? That was the one?
“That was it and I love it! Especially Mefisto (bassist) loved it. He was head over heels with Voivod with the first album. It was brutal, different, strange, original. Snake’s vocals... later on in 1986 I guess we saw the video clips somewhere by chance who recorded it from another big VHS cassette and it was from a gig. We watched it over and over and over. It was like that.”
What about that first lineup? You had yourself, Adrian...
“Adrian was his nickname. We went to the same high school. I met him and we started talking about founding a band. I came up with the name in a history lesson – I already said that several times, but... there was a history lesson about St Petersburg and how it was built, how many people died. Back then we were more AC/DC-like and there was this song ‘Petersburg’ I wrote. I even remember the riff and some lyrics. Wooow, there was this Tsar of Russia and he was so nasty and so many people died because they had to build this town, city later on this marshland and swamps. Fuck! Imperator, he was the Emperor of Russia. Oh yeah, this is a good name.”
Nothing to do with the Roman Emperors?
“Nothing with the Roman Emperors, the Russian Emperor. Because it was just like a casual, regular lesson and probably I was drawing some logo of a band in a history lesson and all of a sudden, it was like the cocktail party effect: something interesting's going on. You hear it over there. They're talking about bullshit and all of a sudden it pops up so you pay attention – and I heard: “Petersburg. Many victims. Harsh times,” and I had the name for the band right away.
Tell us a bit about 'Endless Sacrifice'...
“Okay… so, we wanted to play the Metalmania Festival in 1987.”
At the Spodek? Katowice?
“[laughs] Yeeaaah man. You know more than many people in Poland! There was this audition or something like that. We qualified with our tape. We were good enough to be invited to play live. There was a so-called ‘leśniczówka’ [leshni-choovka], like a forest house in Chorzów. There was a place, the rehearsal room of Dzem, the blues band. Anyway it was there and there was the drummer from Turbo, and you can hear him, because there was a chance we had a real drum kit and there were probably some Marshalls. I asked the guy who sat at this console, like very kindly: ‘Could you please record us?’. I bought the best tape in Pewex [Pevex – a shop where party members could buy Western goods with foreign currency]. You know what Pewex was? Special stores... there were a couple of them in every big city and you could only buy stuff paying in dollars, pound sterling and deutschmarks. And they were I don't know, five, seven... ten times more expensive than anything else, so imagine.”
“We took the cabinet of a hand-made amp and the head by train. Transported it. Then we came back by train, but it was only once because the parents were away in two weeks. Otherwise we had no place to play. We had to go to the cellar in Mefisto’s block of flats for instance. There were lightbulbs and we had to plug in a special adaptor to them to get a regular socket – it was comedy. This was 1986, but let's get back. Endless Sacrifice. We went there and we recorded it – we only had one take. We recorded this tape because we had an opportunity and in the background you can hear non-stop, somebody going dadadum dadadum dadadum and this was the drummer from Turbo warming up. It's there because that was the only chance to record something. We recorded that and straight from Katowice we went to Bielsko-Biała to a friend of ours who was a big tape trader, one of those three in Poland, probably including me already. He [listened to it] and said: ‘Fuck...no. Is that you?’ I said yes. We didn’t like it too much but he said: ‘Nononono please could I copy that?’ I said: ‘Really? You think it's worth it?’ he said ‘Yes!’. We stayed overnight and we copied like 20 tapes and said: ‘Man, I’m sending it everywhere I can – it kills.’ I didn't really know it was something good back then. We didn’t like it too much but his reaction... I said: ‘Hey, it’s probably okay.’”
The process of copying 20 tapes in 1986 meant you had to play the whole fucking tape both sides... so he sat there the whole night?
“The whole night! We went to sleep and he sat and didn’t sleep a wink. He didn’t want to lose the opportunity to copy it from the original.”
He probably knew your demo better than you!
“Yeah, after the first night, definitely! So that was Endless Sacrifice – 1986”.
So 1987. Deathlive. You switched from Polish to English that year and some have said that you became the most well-known extreme metal band in Poland after that demo. A little bit of background about that...
“The same story! Very similar, simply we played two festivals, open air festivals. One was in July and one was in August and we took this opportunity and recorded that. That was the only possibility for us to go on with something. That's how this demo was put together. We recorded Deathlive, one side, the other side. A black cover with Deathlive because someone had access to a word-editing program, which was a novelty.”
It does look pretty good, we have to admit, compared to the first demo cover.
“That was hand drawn. Tomek did that, the drummer. I think it’s pretty infantile and naive but a classic, I wouldn’t change it. Endless Sacrifice like some Mayas or Incas cutting throats – even now when we played that at a gig two weeks ago so Chris, the second guitar player was going like *makes a cut to his throat*. I said: ‘Why did you do this when we played with Behemoth in December?’ And he said: ‘That’s a reference to the cover on the demo! [laughs]’.”
How did that go with Behemoth? They owe you stylistically I think, for that sort of over-the-top vocal style.
“I talked to him and if it hadn’t been for Nergal and his invitation to join Merry Christless in December... they were fans and to some extent they still are. He refreshed my memory, and he once wrote me like two years ago now, maybe June 2017. He found me on my Facebook Imperator official, he said: ‘How are you hanging? Any music? Something?’ I said: ‘Wow! Hello dude, congratulations for what you have established and where you are and stuff really. Keep on doing that. Sorry dude I don’t know you, but wish you all the best,’ and he said: ‘No, it’s quite the opposite. You know me because I was at your last gig, and Behemoth and the band was already on.’ He wrote something like: ‘You found a good 15 minutes for me, and you were very understanding, and you listened to me... I asked a lot of questions, and you didn't just push me away and I will remember that. I'm thankful for this.’ He was a fan of Imperator. A couple of months after this first exchange, I went to their rehearsal room, because he invited me to see Behemoth playing in the rehearsal room in December, probably in 2017. He and Orion said: ‘Okay so we’re inviting you to join the lineup for Merry Christless 2018’. ‘Yeah sure, I can’t play the guitar man – I don't know my tracks. I haven't been playing for 23 years so it's a nice joke.’ He said: ‘Okay, think - you have a couple of months because we’d have to somehow advertise that in the early spring or so.’ So I left their place, called Mefisto and said: ‘Man, we have a mission, probably. I want to resurrect the band.’ He laughed and said: ‘Just kidding?’ I said ‘No.’ He said: ‘Bariel how is that gonna happen – what about your guitar skills?’ I said: ‘I'll see.’”
So that’s how the band reformed...
“That was the spark, yeah. I would say that 80-90% of people around me said: ‘Bariel, don't resurrect the band. Don’t destroy the legend.’ I said: ‘Okay, give me a chance and come to the show in December.’ So I guess Nergal and his invitation had a lot to play in my decision to reform the band. Because I literally reformed it. First of all, I had to learn to play the guitar again from almost nothing. That was a fascinating thing, it happened by chance and I cannot imagine anybody would be ready to undertake such an experiment on themselves. Okay, so I’ll see what it is like – I’ll stop playing guitar for 23 years – and we were at a real peak in early 1994 – we stopped. I stopped because I didn’t want to play slow. I wanted to fucking play fast, and it didn’t work out, especially with the drummer probably. After those 20-something years I said: ‘Okay, we'll see. Let's try to refresh.' It was difficult but I persevered. I played a lot. Last year… 2018 I dunno man, 200 rehearsals.”
Read the full, unabridged interview in print soon from Cult Never Dies to learn more about Imperator and Deathlike Silence Productions, the recording of their iconic debut The Time Before Time and the demise and resurrection of the band.
