In a new interview with Tom Wilson of Australia’s Sense Music Media, guitarist/vocalist 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: “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.”