Pathogen / Deathevoker - Consecrated in Morbidity

PATHOGEN / DEATHEVOKER - Consecrated in Morbidity (OLD TEMPLE - CD2015)

If someone asked me about some Asian death metal that I really think are good and worth of our support then Deathevoker and Pathogen would mentioned for sure. I know both; I reviewed some of their stuff in the past like Deathevoker’s “Towards Nothingness” and Pathogen’s “Forged in the Crucible of Death”. The Philippine band is especially cool, I like their music a lot and can only be saddened that I had no chance to get some more of their releases (and they do have quite vast discography, while I only have three CDs, shit!). Hopefully I will be able to fix this mistake. Not many Asian bands were able to impress me, these two surely did. So, to find a split CD with both was surely a nice thing. It’s released on Polish Old Temple, so it’s easy to find and cheap and I did not hesitate to add it when I was putting my order in this label’s shop. First, I must say that I am impressed how this CD is released. Killer artwork by Irwan (also in Deathevoker on guitars) looks superb, so does the golden disc. And I can only moan about the tiny font; it’s hard to read anything with my tired eyes haha!

But let’s check the music. And this is really nice, yes. Pathogen is first and comes with three songs plus Bathory cover. The first song, “Mortuphagia”, I can say I like it a lot. It starts fast and then have the usual old school slow and mid paced tempo, it’s very vicious song and has a nice Swedish death metal vibe, in the vein of less melodic Dismember, with a bit of Possessed or Sadistic Intent. “Dominion” follows in the same style and would be nice, but why is it just one minute long?? Then we have a decent Bathory cover with very harsh production and even rawer live recording of one song. Well, to be honest the Pathogen releases I’ve heard before were better than this stuff, “Mortuphagia” being the only real good piece of their part of the split, but it’s surely a solid slab for my ears.

Deathevoker on the other hand delivers songs, which shows that these Malaysians developed and their music got better since the demos. They bring four songs and I can say that I like them a lot. The production is surely better than on the Pathogen part of the split, the songs, even if far from being perfect, are solid and come with some excellent riffs. This is just harsh and morbid death metal, again very much in the European (mainly Swedish like “Indecent and Obscene”) vein, with total old school style worship. These songs are really cool, like “Hatefull Quest”, “The Silence...Death” for example and I cannot think of anything what would make Deathevoker not worth of your support. They added “Troops of Doom” as an extra song and I’m just really pleased with the whole result. Definitely need to check their split with Fetid Zombie now.

Final rate: 65/100