INTERVIEW: Sven de Caluwé – Aborted

Belgian gore-enthusiasts ABORTED are like a fine wine. They just keep getting better with age. 2016’s Retrogore release pushed the band’s experimentation to new levels whilst still maintaining their signature, crushing death metal sound. 2018 brings the newest instalment in their increasingly devastating arsenal entitled TerrorVision which is due for release on September 21st via Century Media Records. We caught up with frontman, and only remaining founding member, Sven de Caluwé to get some insight on this impending release as well as how the band continue to evolve and reinvent themselves after 20 plus years.

ABORTED’s most recent effort Retrogore has been out for a couple of years now, how do you feel the band has developed in this time?

Sven: We have changed a lot in regards to how we approach things, we’ve been a lot more ‘picky’ when it comes to touring. We did a little less touring for Retrogore, we did the KREATOR tour and the Devastation On The Nation tour in the States and besides that just a couple of festivals. Our main focus has been on the writing for Terrorvision so hopefully people notice! We have evolved musically too in comparison to previous records.

Terrorvision is due for release in October. Was there anything you approached differently with this release?

Sven: We did it completely differently! [Laughs] This is the first time we’ve done pre-production’s of everything. With Retrogore and The Necrotic Manifesto we pieced together some demos with pre-programmed drums and when we got in the studio Ken [Bedene, drums] would just figure out all the drums on the spot and we’d rearrange things if need be. I’d literally write the lyrics the day before tracking them. It was quite stressful but the result was there, it worked. This time we spent a year and a half writing, Ken got a studio together and he did the majority of the writing this time as he plays guitar. He recorded drums at home, we did all the guitars at home and the samples. I went to a friend of mine who has a studio as I’m too fucking stupid to be able to record myself! So we had pretty complete songs before we even started recording properly at Kohlekeller.

How do you find the writing process considering your members are scattered around the world? Do you get in the studio together or is it kind of pieced together as you go along?

Sven: Well here’s the funny thing, we used to! This time round we split the band in two and Me and Ken went to Kohlekeller to record drums and vocals and everyone else recorded their guitar and bass parts at Mendel‘s [bij de Leij, guitars]. At no point during the recording did we even meet! [Laughs] We shot some videos right after the recording, like literally days after the recording and that was the first time we met and we were like “So yeah, the record turned out cool right!”

[laughs] Wow! I guess that is the wonders of technology these days.

Sven: Yeah, I mean it was only possibly as we knew exactly what we were going to do. There was some last minute arrangements but everyone knew what was going to happen and that enabled us to make two teams in order for us to work faster.

ABORTED have now had the same lineup since Global Flatline. Do you feel this has helped the creative process going forward?

Sven: I think so. Ken has contributed more and more as the year have gone by. He has contributed a lot to the writing of TerrorVision, Mendel too. He wrote a good part of The Necrotic Manifesto and Retrogore. It’s definitely a team that works and we have a band where everyone is looking in the same direction and working hard!

TerrorVision is ABORTED’s 10th album, how do you make sure you continue to be inventive and don’t become too complacent?

Sven: We told ourselves before writing TerrorVision that if it isn’t better than the last record then there is no point in doing it right? We thought of how we could step it up, do we want to go more technical? Do we wanna go faster, more brutal? more ‘grindy’? Do we want to elaborate on what we just scratched the surface of with Retrogore where it was more, I don’t want to say melodic but like dark atmospherical parts? I think we chose to explore that a bit more whilst scaling up the other elements, there are definitely some songs on TerrorVision which are the most technical thing that this band has ever done. Whether it’s time signatures, riffs or drum parts and tempos, but I think adding that gives a more homogeneous feeling to the record as well as some necessary breathing points and more memorable points which allows the chaos to stand out if that makes sense.

ABORTED have a lot of touring scheduled to coincide with the new album such as Australia with THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, Hell Over Europe, the UK with CRYPTOPSY. Are there any particular dates/places you are looking forward to?

Sven: Everything! We’re going to New Zealand first before we hit up Australia but I’m really excited for Perth. It’s like a five hour flight from the nearest town and we haven’t been there in ten years so we’re very excited to do that. We haven’t headlined the UK in a long time so we’re actually really looking forward to that. All of the tour packages we have planned are really cool.

What can the fans expect if they come to one of your shows on these tours? I loved the encased skeletons you had on stage at UK Tech-Fest last year!

Sven: We’re going to bring those out with us and we’re expanding a little bit so there’ll be more stuff going on too.

You’ve experimented with various other projects in the past such as SYSTEM DIVIDE and more recently ORACLES, do you have anything in the works or is your focus solely on ABORTED?

Sven: The focus is mainly on ABORTED for the time being but there has been talks about maybe putting a project together with some of the guys from LENG TCH’E, I was their drummer for the first four records and Jan, their guitarist and their new drummer Oli alongside the bass player from BEAR, a band from Belgium, are looking into starting something whenever time allows in the coming years so that will be something to check out!

Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of Distorted Sound?

Sven: Don’t be a pussy cunt and check out TerrorVision! Hopefully we’ll see you out at one of the shows.

TerrorVision is set for release on September 21st via Century Media Records.

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