Aborted "The Archaic Abattoir" (Olympic)
By Eric Chon
Friday. Aug 12, 2:59 AM
An interview with vocalist Sven De Caluwé.

Thick with grooves, heavy riffs, and relentless savagery, Aborted’s The Archaic Abattoir is easily one of the best death metal releases of the year. Part of a burgeoning Belgium metal scene, Aborted have upped the ante for brutal metal, combining melody and ferocity without borrowing from the highly popular Swedish sound. They have recently wrapped up their first U.S. tour and I got a chance to sit down with Sven for a quick chat.

This isn’t your first time in America, is it?

No no, but this is first time we’ve played outside of festivals.

How did your guys get this tour set up?

In the first instance, we didn’t even want to do it. It was a hassle to set everything up and then Bart upped and left. That was a pain. Everything seemed like it was poorly planned, you know? But things worked them-selves out and we’re really excited to be here regardless.

That’s awesome, man. So you’ll be hittin’ California and filming a video there, right?

Oh yeah. Basically I just contacted some directors I like. Darren (Doane) was one of the guys who got back to us and he seemed to be really into the band so it worked itself out well.

How’s it been without Bart?

It’s been alright. I mean, we’ve played before as a four-piece prior to hit-ting the States. We got one of the guys from Leng Tch’e to fill in and all – that’s been good. This is his first show and he’s only had one rehearsal! (laughs) He had one week to learn everything and he worked really hard and it’s worked out really well. But yeah, we’ve played a bunch of shows with just four guys.

Bart just up and left us. He sent a text message to my phone saying he’s quitting the band. We didn’t think too much about it, since he’s been like that recently. Like he wasn’t having fun. We knew it was coming but we never expected it to happen like this. It wasn’t very cool but we don’t care! We’re just going to keep going, you know? That’s what this band is all about. We didn’t want to disappoint anyone by canceling anything. We just had to move on.

Speaking of moving on, The Archaic Abattoir really shows a progression from Goremageddon...

Yeah. Goremageddon was a great album, but we worked very hard on making sure every song on this new one had its own identity. We added a lot of groove and energy on this record. Everything happened really fast and we wrote it in just two months! (laughs) It was very stressful but I’m very proud of everyone in the band for doing something like this in just two months. We hammered out the lyrics in like a week or two: it seems really rushed but it came out okay. (laughs)

How many dates are you playing?

I think six or seven. Four... five? No, four on the East Coast and two on the West. Then we’re coming back in October with Suffocation, Cryptopsy, and Cephalic Carnage. Lots of dates for that and it should be an awesome tour.

I saw Cephalic Carnage at the New England Metal and Festival and they were really something else.

Oh yeah, they are great live! They’re crazy!

Thanks very much for taking the time to chat, Sven! Good luck with the rest of the tour!

Thanks again and it was great to play here! Thanks for coming out!
www.goremageddon.be
www.olympicrecordings.com

Eric Chon

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