Infection pathogénique

Asian groups are generally known around the world for their bestiality and their attachment to old-school and satanic death/black metal. Among all these groups, there are some who his efforts and that would finally deserve to see his status change.
This band is amazing, and made of talent, perseverance, and strength.I really invite you to discover them, I’m sure you shall enjoy! So, place to Pathogen and Willie Desamero, his friendly howler. Before we could see them one day in France, who knows?


1 - Hi Willie, happy to be able to converse with you! What is the path of your group? Also, what is the state of the scene at your home?

Morbid hails, Renan! First of all, thanks for your massive 666% true underground support and hell’s greetings to all your maniac readers/followers out there! Anyway, the path in which we’re taking is as usual-the path of most resistance both personally and musically since playing extreme metal will NEVER be fully accepted by “normal” people and society in general. We don’t care what other people say or think about us, we just want to create and develop our own musick! Fuck the trends! Fuck mainstream society! We will do this until we’re fucking dead! Anyway, here in our small city there is nothing here but boredom and stupid cover bands or bands that try to play their own brand of conformist shit music that’s one reason why I created Pathogen so San Pablo city can have something that is not crap and mediocre like the rest of the people and musicians here. In other places of the Philippines, though, things are generally good in the underground metal scene. Many bands have formed and released great music during the past 2 decades or so and many of them are also getting recognized in the worldwide underground community.

2 - Pathogen is what can be called a productive group. So far you have published: eight splits, four albums, five demos, three compilations, and especially four releases for 2020! Let’s even say rather an ultra-productive band! Where do you get your inspiration? Apparently, you don’t suffer of the white page syndrome!?

Well, actually 2020 is not a very musically inspiring year for me to be honest. It’s been a struggle to finish writing the next Pathogen album, but we managed to finish it 2 months ago nevertheless. We are now in the process of rehearsing and finalizing the arrangements and other minute details of it. We plan to record it next year. Well, your description is kind of true because we always set goals every year and continually challenge ourselves to write to better each release, plus when bands we like asks to do a split we gladly oblige because it helps promote our name overseas as well. There are also many small labels ad fanzines who asks us for unreleased tracks/demos to include to compilation releases, again we welcome them because it’s another way of promoting our music. As for the inspiration, we are very much inspired by the bands we are influenced by and also by current tragic events around the world such as wars, diseases, deaths and the darker side of human lives. It’s really not that hard to find inspiration, you just watch the news ad you can see a lot of things the entire human race stupidly does to itself and the world. I constantly think of music most of the time I just don’t know why. Although there are also months in which I am not very inspired to write music I do other things, and when the urge comes to write a song, I’ll do it. When I don’t feel the urge I don’t do it.

3- I believe you also released a video. What is its format, and where can it be get it?

I believe you are talking about the live DVD released here locally by Metal Havoc Records. It is a raw footage of a Pathogen show back in 2015. You can go and search Metal Havoc Records if you want one I’m not very sure though if it’s still available though.

4- This pace of work is very impressive! How do you organize with the group? Because I guess you all have to work?

Yes, we used to but three of us in the band lost our jobs due to the recent so-called “pandemic” bullshit which shut down a lot of businesses and got a lot of people laid off not to mention cancelled all our shows for the rest of the year! So we had plenty of time in our hands to rehearse right now but like I have said before it’s been quite a struggle to write new music this year because I’m not very much inspired to write anything new lately. But instead of waiting around and doing nothing we try to get things done. I think there are three types of people in the world, the ones who make things happen, the ones who just watches things happen and the idiots who are always wondering what happened, and I’ve always been the one who make things happen ever since I was a child. It always challenges me to find new ways to make something work out. And besides, I never wanted Pathogen to just release an album and have it re-issued endlessly year after year like some “kult” bands does. We want to progress as musicians and as songwriters without compromising what we stand for which is metal of death!!!

5- The cover of the last album is beautiful. What is its story? And who is Bart Kurzok you worked with?

Yes, it absolutely is! That’s what other people said about it as well. Bart was introduced to me by Eryk of Old Temple ad he worked with us to create the album cover artwork. Initially I have no idea what to put in the cover all I know is that I’m fucking sick and tired of the same old colors of black, white and red. I wanted something different but cool and eye-catching as well. We never expected the end result would be this good! And it perfectly accompanies the great music inside because “Obscure Deathworship” is the best Pathogen album we ever did so far.

6- Throughout the history of Pathogen, we note that the rhythm section has evolved several times. I know it has been a long time but, do you remember the reasons that pushed Alex Alfonso and Allan Hernandez, then a little later Erikk Calabia to leave the band?

Well, we were all very young and immature back then. We all have a lot uncontrolled impulses and many such irrational behaviors. Alex got his girlfriend pregnant and decided to leave the band and focus on raising a family in such a young age, Allan left us for another band, Erikk lost interest in music and just “disappeared”. It wasn’t until in 2018 in which I accidentally saw him. And in 2012, our former guitar player, Erwin got divorced and couldn’t handle the turmoil his life had become and stated taking drugs which nearly destroyed his life-which in turn got him fired from the band because he cannot commit anymore. We were plagued by numerous line-up changes especially in the early days. I was the only one who was totally focused and driven by my burning ambition to make Pathogen’s music and career significant worldwide! And I will continue to do this no matter what happens!

7- How did your 'old' stage performances go? Have you ever been able to give concerts outside your home? And what is your status in your own country?

Our old stage performances were very spontaneous and almost punk rock in nature. We didn’t have any setlist we just play whatever song we wanted to play, and oftentimes we would play really drunk sometimes Alex and Erikk were both high on drugs. We didn’t care if played good or not back then. We just want to make some fucking noise!!! But nowadays we have become somewhat more “professional” in our stageshows. We are more concerned now of delivering a great performance and we do have a setlist now! Haha!

8- If you could choose a destination to play, which one would it be? Which festival?

We’d like to play all over the world like any other serious band and meet new people, spread our music out like the plague and such things…As for festivals, any of those great metal festivals in Europe or Japan would be really nice! Maybe you can help us?

9- We have several death groups in France that would perfectly match your style and that could walk the stage with you. Do you know anything about our scene? And what are you listening to yourself right now?

No, to be honest, I don’t really know the underground scene in France in detail. Although I am aware that there are many bands in the underground scene over there and been in contact with several people from France who does labels, fanzines and plays in bands over the past two decades but generally, I don’t really know a lot about the French underground.

10- As we saw, 2020 is rather busy this year for you, with an ep and three splits, What does the rest of your schedule look like? Can your label keep up (laughs)?

Many of the releases we had this year was planned beforehand-meaning they were all planned a year or two previously, it just coincidentally got released all at the same year (2020). And some of the songs were recorded January this year and the others on previous year(s), so it wasn’t at all that surprising to us have them all released at the same year. Much of 2020 was actually spent trying to finish writing the songs for the next Pathogen record.

11- Small more personal questions, now that we are approaching the outcome of this interview: I know you also play in Omenfilth. Can you tell us more? Your drummer is also a live member of Deiphago. What kind of business card is that!???

Yes, Omenfilth was more or less my black metal side project the I play with other people because I do have a lot of musical ideas that would not fit the Pathogen style so I formed Omenfilth to release this “other” music that is bursting within. We have written and released three albums and several split releases since 2013. And we are also working on a split release from a band from Greece which is slated to be released next year. Vic got asked to play drums for Deiphago in 2017 for their Asian tour because their drummer could not make it here.

12 - Were you also the composer of your old bands (Negatron, Effluvium)?

I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging or anything but yes, both bands I was the songwriter and the founding member and it was my first “serious” band. You see, I always had a musical vision that I’d like to express out through the noise we are creating. I was really very much influenced by great and prolific songwriters such as Steve Harris and such. I really was at such a young age in awe of great, well structured songs and how they affect me or other people. I aspired to do the same and here we are two decades later. I used to be the kid who was always at the front row of local gigs, dumbfounded on how bands can create such monstrous noise and how they possess the audiences in seeming ecstasy with their music and now I’m the guy on the stage performing to audiences. It’s funny how certain things turns out sometimes.

13- And finally, a slightly more absurd question to conclude this interview. Beyond the cliché about of this type of astrology: if you were an astro sign, which would best represent Pathogen?

Well, I’m an Aries therefore all my ambitions are driven by my astrological sign. They say that people with Aries birth signs are natural leaders, and it would also be a perfect representation of Pathogen which is burning with massive ambitions and would practically risk anything in order to achieve them!

14- And what would you like to add that we forgot to mention?

I’m not sure. Did I left anything out? Anyway thanks a lot for this interview Renan!!! Keep supporting the underground and you all watch out for the next Pathogen album next year! The time will come when we will be able to ravage your shores and also worldwide with our uncompromising metal of death!!!