Pandemia: 30 Years of Darkness and Death Metal

Pandemia: 30 Years of Darkness and Death Metal

Czech Death Metal outfit Pandemia has just unleashed Darkened Devotion, their sixth full-length masterwork via Hammerheart Records! Celebrating 30 years of relentless brutality, Pandemia possesses a staggering legacy forged in sweat, blood, and unyielding devotion to Death Metal!  The band has decimated stages in over 30 countries alongside legends like Death, Morbid Angel, Behemoth, and Vader!  Highwire Daze recently caught up with guitarist Alex Marek to discuss their Darkened Devotion magnum opus, their early recordings on the underground Lost Disciple Records, the Czech metal scene, and other topics of intrigue.  Read on…

Introduce yourself and tell me what you do in Pandemia.
I’m Alex. I’m the guitarist for Pandemia. I also write a lot of the music for the band. I guess, I’m one of the English-speaking guys from the band. We are based in the Czech Republic, so I’m also doing interviews and all the promotional stuff. Yes, I guess I’ve been in the band since the beginnings, then I left for a while, and I came back in 2022. And since then, we’ve been rolling with a new lineup, and we put together a new album, which we’re going to talk about a lot, hopefully. Yes, so anything else you’d like to know, just ask and let me know.

Before we go into the new album, let’s talk about the Czech Republic. What is the metal scene like in the Czech Republic?
Oh, pretty strong. Pretty strong. You’ve got a couple really high-profile festivals. You probably know about Brutal Assault and Obscene Extreme – they get bands from all over the world coming there. A lot of Czech-based bands are quite doing well internationally. It’s pretty strong, and I think it got better with time. There’s some really heavy hitters, some bands that are super well-integrated into the world’s metal scene, such as Hypnos and Fleshless.

My feeling for the scene is, it’s really well running. There’s a lot of metalheads considering how small the country is. So, I think it’s it’s doing really well. The ratio of people to metalhead – it’s pretty high, and yes, a lot of cool magazines, some web activity. But I think most of the activity around the scene, especially in the music we do, like the death metal, the more extreme side of the metal genre – it’s all about the festivals that come up in the summer. So, apart from the 2 big ones, there’s like a Czech Death Fest that’s nice. There is always huge international headliners and it’s pretty cool. I think if you’re a metalhead in Czech, you definitely keep yourself busy.

It’s very alive, and of course, considering the size of the country, you don’t always get these thousands of people at your concerts. But I think in terms of the health of the scene, it’s doing really well, and I’m quite proud to be coming from that place, and the band is coming from that sort of undergrad scene.

I remember years ago receiving promos from Lost Disciple Records on Spreading the Message and Personal Demon.  And so, I was really happily surprised to receive a promo—and Darkened Devotion—on Hammerheart Records. What was it like working with Lost Disciple Records back in the day?
That’s always the trap, to become a nostalgia act, and we try to break Pandemia into 2025. But Lost Disciple, man, that was such a huge step up for us as a band. We were formed in ’94, ’95. We did a couple of demos, and then in ’99, I think it was ’98 actually, we did a 3-song promo, which consisted of material that was a little bit more faster. It was like the first songs where we started using blast beats, more faster double kicks and everything. We did 3 songs, and I started sending it out.

It was pretty much in the beginning, before the whole internet craze kicked off. It was at a time when you were still sending stuff, I believe I sent them… I got a leaflet, a flyer of Lost Disciple somewhere in the post, and I just like – I’ll send it to them, and see what they say – and they loved it. They just fell in love with the music. And in ’99, yes, we recorded our first album. And with Lost Disciple, back then, it was pretty cool. They were really supporting their bands back then. They also had Pessimist. I don’t know if you’re probably familiar, right? From the West Coast.

Oh yes, of course. They’re from LA.
Yes, exactly. And there was a bunch of other, I think that’s a couple of black metal bands. And Rich, the guy who was running the thing, he was super supportive. You could really sense that he was into the music. He was just doing it out of passion. He just got us a studio booked, and then he also gave us some support to go on tour.

It just really clicked with Lost Disciple. And Rich was doing a lot of heavy work for us. I was doing interviews like crazy, just typing them up, and then sometimes faxing them over to the magazines.  We had reviews everywhere, especially for the first album. The second album was a little bit trickier to get out.  The metal scene was starting to wobble, especially in extreme metal. But he was great.

And really, what Lost Disciple helped us is really to establish ourselves, as they gave us a really good name on the international scene, especially in Europe, in the States – which is incredible. And yes, we went on tour with Vader, Vital Remains, Fleshcrawl and Rebellion. We did a month-long tour, after the release of Spreading the Message, which was just so cool. That was some of the most active and most busy we’ve ever been back then, it the Lost Disciple times.

And then of course, the second album Personal Demon, far more refined. We took our time. We gelled as a band. We grew as musicians. It was a step, maybe 2 levels up for us. You can hear the sound improved. It was more organic. There was hardly any mistakes on the album. On the first one, when I listen to it now, it’s like “Holy fuck, how can we let that go?” But with the second album, everything clicked, and that’s where we established our sound.

And yes, we did a bunch of touring. We went on tour in Europe with Incantation, and especially we broke into Latin America. We always felt very passionate about death metal, and about the roots of it, like the Florida scene.

And when we played in these new countries, and especially, we were booked in some tiny city, somewhere in southern Argentina or Chile, where nobody went. In some places, we were the first international band to play ever. And we just felt like we were really, actually, it might sound corny, but we’re Spreading the Message of death metal there.

Then we started drifting away from Lost Disciple at that time, and they didn’t renew our contract. I think, Rich also disappeared from the scene in terms of running a record label. So, then we just started looking for a new label, and the third album came out on another record company. But great times, Lost Disciple, always the best memories.

And now we arrive to the new album Darkened Devotion. Is there any overall story or concept behind that album title?
Definitely. Yes, that’s the first concept album. It’s not a story, but it has a common thread. And the album is all about what happens at night, dreaming, night anxieties, cannot sleep, whatever. Having nightmares, feeling of presence somewhere in your room, sleep paralysis, all these just these nightly adventures that don’t always go well. The album is all about that. It’s full of that kind of emotion and this kind of theme.

Every song represents a different type of topic or an issue you could even say. And each song also tries to provide some sort of a resolve in a way out of it. We don’t want to be stuck in those dark patterns, right? So it’s like the devotion to facing and resolving your darkness. So, that is 9 songs there, and each song is closely tied to a specific topic of one of these night-related activities.

One of your newest member, Jakub Bayer, is also in another band called Panychida.
Yes.

How did Jakub become involved with Pandemia?
He is a great drummer.  And he lives in the right place. And he just he was introduced by a mutual friend of ours. We are based in the very west of Czech Republic. We are super close to Germany. We can go on a bicycle to Germany and we go shopping there. We have a lot of Germans coming over every weekend, doing their lunches and dinners over on the Czech side. And Jakub is not far away from us, and we have a mutual friend from a band called Coward. They’re really good guys, playing this progressive thrash. And their drummer was like, “Hey, you need to get in touch with this guy. He’s super busy, but I think he would be the perfect drummer for you.“

Because we were reforming the band in 2022, and we were struggling in reconnecting with the last drummer that was in the band, before the hiatus. I don’t know if you are aware, but the band was out of action, on a hold between 2016 and 2022. And yes, so then we reconnected. I reconnected with the bass player now. Us 2, we started a band in ’95, and he talked me into coming back and just saying, “Hey, let’s just give it another shot.” I was like, “Okay, it feels good.”

So, we started looking for drummer. We rehearsed a bunch of times with the older drummer who was in the band like in 2015, ’16, but it just wasn’t working out, especially because he was too busy or too far away. There was always something, like when something’s not flowing and how that feels. So, we kept looking. And then we got offered to meet this Jakub, this new guy on the scene who was already in Panychida. And yes, we met him. He says, “I’m not sure if I can commit, but let’s have a chat.”

We had a chat. He was like, “Okay, maybe. Yes let’s try, let’s play together.”  So he learned 3 of our songs. And yes, we got together, played the songs, and it really felt great. It was like, holy molly, we’ve never sounded so good. And he was like, okay. He says he’s ready to commit to the band. So, we’ve had him since 2022, since the spring.   And since then, he’s been a really solid member of the band and absolutely vital force in the reformation of the band, just bringing it back together.

Has Pandemia ever played here in the United States or is that something you’d like to do maybe in support of this album?
Yes, we would love to. We haven’t played yet. We did the whole South and Central America. We played was Mexico City. Never made it over the border. We tried, after the first album, we had a plan to, Rich from Lost Disciple was saying that he was ready to put us on the Milwaukee Metal Fest.

I’ve been there, yes. You guys would’ve been great there.
Oh man. We were almost; we applied for visas and stuff, but of course, the U.S. Embassy just said what the fuck are you? Just go away.

Really?
We went to the embassy after a month to collect our passports, and they were like, no, we’re not letting you to go there. That’s all. So, unfortunately, we didn’t get the visas, but that was the closest we ever got to playing in the States. And I would love to just break through and just come over, play in a bunch of cities, support someone on the tour, it would be cool!

You actually played with Hypnos. What was that experience like?
Oh man, that was incredible. Yes, very hospitable. They just needed a live guitarist. And I was always treated Pandemia as the primary band. So, I played with them in between 2000 and 2005. We played some big festivals in Germany. We did a tour with Morbid Angel. Just hear this lineup: Morbid Angel, Enslaved, The Crown, Dying Fetus, Behemoth, and Hypnos. That was the lineup!

We were on the bus with the Behemoth and Dying Fetus guys. It was incredible. Yes, Hypnos gave me the exposure to the top level of the Death Metal scene. It was such a privilege playing with them We are still great friends, and we are actually playing a gig together next month. So yes, happy to reconnect with them.

What has kept you so passionate about metal and about Pandemia for 30 years and counting?
Yes, that’s a very good question. I’ve never questioned my connection to metal. I’ve been listening to it since, I don’t know, I was 8 or 9 years old, through my older brother. And it’s just naturally something that of gives me… It just nourishes something within me. I can’t explain what it is, but it’s super real and super necessary for me to keep that going. It’s just part of my DNA, and I just love the great-sounding, passionate metal music. There’s nothing like it.

I don’t know any other scene, that would have this mix of grit, musicianship, and creativity.  It’s just very natural. I knew when I left the band, I had to do more stuff than just play in a death metal band. But at the same time, I never stopped listening or playing guitar. I’ve got riffs on the album actually, on Darkened Devotion. We have riffs from 20 years ago that I just stashed away. It’s like, I’m going to use it someday. I never thought I would use it again in Pandemia. I always knew that I’m going to write more music and do another death metal album, and it just turned out to be this one…

(Interview by Ken Morton)

Pandemia is:
Jaroslav “Jarda” Friedrich – bass
Alex Marek – guitars
Jirka Krš – vocals
Jakub Bayer – drums

Pandemia on Instagram