PESTILENCE's PATRICK MAMELI Explains Why He Is Planning On Moving To Thailand

In a new interview with Tom Wilson of Australia's Sense Music Media, guitarist/vocalist Patrizio "Patrick" Mameli of long-running Dutch progressive death metallers PESTILENCE revealed that he is planning on leaving his birth country "in a few years" and "moving to Thailand." Asked what prompted that decision, Mameli said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, the thing is that I can make music and tour from any country in the world, I guess; just fly me in and I'm there. The thing is, is that the Netherlands, for a lot of people, how they view us, is a very liberal country. You can get to smoke your weed and stuff and like that — Amsterdam, blah, blah, blah — but you have to realize that this is one of the most taxed countries in the world; like almost 65% goes to taxes. Plus, we have a flooding in of illegal immigrants and people from other countries that, I guess, it's a problem that is all over the world happening. And things are getting too expensive here. It's just too expensive. And I can't have no peace of mind when I have to think about money all the time, where I'm just wanting to play music and compose music and do this. And Thailand is a country where there's controlled chaos, let me say it this way. My wife is Chinese. We love the Chinese cuisine, and it's just a free country and it's very inexpensive. So that's the main reason."

Asked if there is a good metal scene in Thailand, Patrick said: "There are some bands, but they mainly are more like the grindish thing, like the grind death, so a lot of blast beats and stuff like that. Nothing too serious, I think. They'll probably lynch me for saying that.

"I grew up in the '80s with bands like DEATH and MORBID ANGEL, so it can't get any better than that, I guess," he explained. "People nowadays, they don't even — the younger generation, I mean — they don't even know where death metal came from. They grow up on deathcore and that's what they think is the heaviest stuff that is around. So, yeah, sometimes I feel old — sometimes I really feel old. Because I'm turning 57 this year and trying to keep up by going to the gym every day, eating good food, no alcohol, no drugs, nothing, just trying to be as energetic as possible for the times to come with PESTILENCE, because I just wanna keep on continuing doing this for a few years more. And I think I still have enough riffs in me and new ideas to keep on going."

PESTILENCE's re-recorded best-of album, "Levels Of Perception", was made available in April via Agonia Records. The LP features twelve tracks from across the band's 38-year career.

Re-recording of the tracks has not only managed to breathe new life into them — half thanks to new line-up, and other half by implementing subtle changes which reflect Mameli's matured vision and refined with years of experience aesthetic — but also sets them apart from cheap, unimaginative compilations, by unifying the album's sound as befits a full-length release.

PESTILENCE was established in the Netherlands in 1986 and is considered to be a progressive death metal phenom, labeled on the same genre-defying scale as DEATH, CYNIC and ATHEIST. The group is led by founder, guitarist and mastermind Mameli, who's been the band's binding factor through two breakups and reunions. Both a reinvention and a confirmation of everything the band has been standing for since 1986, PESTILENCE is more than ever breaking new grounds and exploring the further outposts of extreme metal on "Exitivm" (2021) — the band's most recent album, which landed on several Billboard charts. In 2023, the band remastered and reissued its classic catalog, and announced "Portals" to be the title of its next studio album, which is currently in the works.

Image credit: Brutal Assault