San Diegos PATHOLOGY has certainly with their latest and fifth release “Awaken to the Suffering” marked out their path. After releasing two chunky fullengths early on the band decided to step out of the messy and surgical halls of pathological gore and instead enter the good old domains where zombies roam to feast on human juicy flesh. Something that drummer Dave Astor means has a lot more to offer.

And again with an extra helping hand from a certain character PATHOLOGY is definitely on the right track.

Did you get tired of the sloppy gore stuff and just let the love for old zombie movies flourish? Also with the video track ”Media consumption” in mind?
– On our first two albums, “Surgically Hacked" (2006) and "Incisions of Perverse Debauchery" (2008), we were still playing around with ideas and trying to figure out what direction we wanted to go. The gore stuff is cool but we wanted to branch out and take it to the next level. There is only so far you can go with playing gore metal. Zombies are cool and we wanted to add that to the band early on. There is lot of cool concepts we do with the zombies and Pathology. The next will have a cool twist.

I got kind of happy to see that you continued to use the Doc again on the new cover.
– Yeah, you will be seeing the mad doctor for a while. He is the leader and his plan is to take over the world. His story will keep getting more answered while the albums progress.

You also have a project called BEING KILLED, what’s going on there?
– I started PATHOLOGY in 2006 and BEING KILLED was just a little side project I had going on when I was bored. But since 2009 I just haven't had any time for that. PATHOLOGY is my main focus.

As I understand you grew up with parents playing in sort of punk bands. What was that like and how come you started playing drums?
– It was great growing up in family that played music. My dad was the guitarist in a punk band called BATTALION OF SAINTS. That’s how I learned music, and that’s actually all I know how to do. I originally learned how to play bass and guitar but when I was like fifteen I couldn’t find any drummers so I decided to do it on my own. Growing up listening to punk it was easy to get into extreme music once I heard it. One of the first death metal albums I heard was NAPALM DEATH’s “Scum”.

What do your parents think about the stuff you’re doing?
– I’m not sure what my mom thinks, we don't talk much anymore, and my dad passed away in like 1991.

Like myself you’re married and have kids. My wife is very patiened, and understanding, when it comes to my taste in music, and my five-year-old daughter of course hates most of it. How’s your life situation?
– My life situation is great. I have three kids and a wife that is very understanding to my touring and music lifestyle.

Back to the ”media consumption”-thing again then. Being a parent, what’s your advice to other parents who doesn’t understand this kind of music and perhaps their kids in the early teens wanna pick up any of your early albums or a classic title like ”Butchered At Birth”. Where do you draw your own moral line when it comes to music, movies and video games? Your words of wisdom here?
– I’m probably not the best one to ask about parenting advice but I think of it like a funny horror movie. All that gore stuff is funnier to me than anything. My words of wisdom would probably be, chill out. My kids play lots of video games like “Call of duty: Black Ops”. Zombies and gore music related stuff is all through my house so they have no choice but to get used to it. Other parents that come to my house sometimes gets a little freaked out, but then realize me and my family are normal and that we’re well behaved people.

Not only once, but twice you’ve toured with Sweden’s GRAVE this year. Please share a tour moment that sticks out?
– Yeah that was a great time touring with them. They’re real nice guys. Only funny thing that sticks out is that we had a fill-in singer (Shawn Whitaker) because our singer Jon broke his leg and could not do the tour. Anyway. One of the last days of our US tour Shawn accidentally locked our guitar player Kevin in our trailer with the keys with him in the trailer. I guess he had no idea he was in there, and locked it up. I got a call from Kevin and he asked me to please let him out of the fucking trailer. After freaking out for about 5 minutes I remembered I had a spare key hidden. I let him out and we all had a good chuckle...

PATHOLOGY MySpace