Continuing in the tradition of 2020’s New Man, New Songs, Same Shit, Vol. 1, Adam “Nergal” Darski of Polish black-metal masters Behemoth has enlisted a star-studded cast to make cameos on the third album from his blues/country/folk side-project, Me and That Man. Vol. 2 features guest shots from metal royalty, including Abbath, Mary Goore (a contractual pseudonym for Ghost ringleader Tobias Forge) and former W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes. “I call them twin albums,” Nergal tells Apple Music. “They’re two sides of the same coin. Picking the guests for each song is just intuitive. Some tracks are more aggressive or more mellow, so I go with my gut feeling, and then I reach out to people.” Below, he comments on a few key tracks. “Black Hearse Cadillac” (feat. Hank von Hell, Anders Odden) “Initially, I wanted Iggy Pop to sing on that one. I’m good friends with his managers—they’re actually my neighbours in Warsaw, believe it or not. They told me it’s not impossible, but it’s all about timing. You send him tracks and then you wait. But I needed people I could make plans with, so I reached out to Hank, who loved the track. He liked that it wasn’t more punky stuff that would be reminiscent of Turbonegro. To me, his delivery is the closest Me and That Man gets to rap. And then, Anders added some amazing guitars.” “Under the Spell” (feat. Mary Goore) “I really wanted to do something together with Tobias [Forge, of Ghost] for a long time, but we couldn’t use his name because of politics—and that’s all fine with me. I love it when guys from metal bands do non-metal projects outside their comfort zone, which is why I think ‘Under the Spell’ came out so good. It’s probably one of my all-time favourites from Me and That Man. By the way, this was the only face-to-face collaboration I did on the record. We were able to have that creative dialogue, and I learned a lot just by working with Tobias and observing him.” “All Hope Has Gone” (feat. Blaze Bayley, Gary Holt, Jeff “Mantas” Dunn) “We did a show in Israel years ago, and Blaze just appeared backstage with his manager. We started talking and it felt like I’ve known this guy for 20 years. Then I wrote this ballad that reminded me of ‘Blood and Tears’ by Danzig, but then it also had Gary Moore blues vibes as well. I thought Blaze would be a great voice for the song, and then he wrote his own lyrics. He’s singing his life story here, about his wife passing. It’s fucking heartbreaking. And then, add on top of that Mantas and Gary Holt shredding. So, you’ve got Maiden, Slayer and Venom in one song that’s not even fucking metal. I can officially die happy.” “Losing My Blues” (feat. Olve Abbath Eikemo, Frank the Baptist, Chris Holmes) “We recorded the instrumental for this during Vol. 1, but I wasn’t quite sure of the other ingredients yet. I’m friends with Abbath, who has Bömbers, his Motörhead tribute band, so I asked him to do his Lemmy imitation. The first time he did it, he was drunk, and all the stuff he sent was out of control. But he did it again, and I love the result. And then we got Chris Holmes because I had already got Doug [Blair] from the new W.A.S.P. incarnation on the record, so I thought it’d be awesome to have the original W.A.S.P. guitarist on the same record, because I’m a huge W.A.S.P. fan.” “Year of the Snake” (feat. David Vincent) “I’ve been trying to do a collaboration with David Vincent for ages. I reached out to him during the Apostasy era of Behemoth because I wanted him to sing ‘Inner Sanctum’ with us. He was into it, but he asked for a certain amount of money. We felt it shouldn’t be done that way, so I got Warrel Dane [from Nevermore] to sing on the song, which turned out very cool. Later, David and I grew our relationship to the level that we’re good buddies now, so we got him on this track.”