Interview mit Sven de Caluwé von Aborted

Diese Hello Sven, thank you for taking time to do this how are you. How are you the days?
All good! Just working a lot on the day job during this period as well as the Aborted record and my other projects Coffin Feeder and Fetal Blood Eagle!

With your last album „TerrorVision“ go entered on German album charts on number 39. Is something like that important for you and do you hope for a certain chart placement of „ManiaCult“?
Honestly, it’s a nice bonus and feels great to see sales going well and fans enjoying stuff, but that’s not why we write and release albums or do this music. We do this because we enjoy it and for the fans. That’s the main reason, anything else is a nice bonus. Obviously, it would be great if “ManiaCult” can do something similar of course.

All Aborted albums we reviewed since 2003 received 8 to 9 points out of 10. How do you motivate yourself after such a long time, how is it possible to write something new and interesting every time and keep up the constant high quality?
Thank you! Well, we just love what we do and always want to try new things and see where it can take us. Sure, we have a sandbox that we sort of have to work in, but we like to expand that box and make it bigger every time we go further. There needs to be a point to a new album and not just a repetition of the past in my opinion. Hopefully, we succeed and people get what we are going for!

Par Olofsson is responsible for your cover artwork for the third time now. Why is he the best man for these terribly beautiful artworks and what instructions did he get for the „ManiaCult“ cover?
Well, honestly we keep going back because he does an amazing job, we really loved what he did with “TerrorVision” and he got the concept perfectly well illustrated. It’s been fun and easy working with him and I love the style. The brief he got was that we wanted a central figure, a mixture of all iconic horror movie slashers and that he should be batshit crazy, summoning demons for the end of the world, but the undertone and metaphor of it all were mental health issues in our current day society. He knocked it out of the park!

What kind of guy is Wayland „Maniac“ Thurston and what connection does he have to the Lovecraft character of the same name?
He doesn’t, it was just a nice nudge to the narrator character of the Call of Cthuhlu. We love Lovecraft’s work and it was just nice to inject more Lore into the whole concept of the album. He basically embodies all the best, or worst, from the slashers we all enjoy so much from back in the 80s and 90s.

Does the concept about the sick cult run through the entire album? What can you tell me about the story?
Well, as said it’s all a metaphor for the crazy shit happening in this world these days, it’s going throughout most of the album with a certain dose of humor and gore, as we always do, of course. Basically, Wayland is a deranged maniac that is gathering all these insane theories into his own sort of “Necronomicon”  to summon ancient demons to end the world as we know it. In reality, we don’t need Wayland, we are all Wayland.

There is also an action figure from Wayland Thurston, which is very cool. It supports the 80s vibe of the album concept perfectly. How came the idea to do an action figure for the album?
Well, to be honest we actually started from the action figure and then worked our way back to the central figure, the story of the cult, and artwork from there on! (laughs) The idea for the action figure came from Lander, a good friend of mine, who also recorded all my vocals for this album. He makes custom He-Man figures and suggested we should make an Aborted action figure, to which the inner child in me obviously said yes and there we went on the long road of creating a toy (laughs). A death metal toy at that.

I think „ManiaCult“ is more varied, more melodic and groovy than previous albums and still chaotic and very fast and brutal. How do you rate the album in comparison to your previous albums?
It’s always hard to rate your own work. I would say it really depends on what you are looking for in a release. Is it our most extreme record? Probably not. Does it have some of the most extreme parts we ever recorded? For sure. I would say it’s our most varied, well-rounded and dynamic record to date, it has everything the band ever stood for and more.

The album is structured by intro, interlude in the middle and an outro at the end. Is this something like the glue that orders the chaos and holds it together?
Yes, we wanted for the album to be easy to digest, to split things up properly, and have an actual moment of rest from the insanity so when it kicks back in, it has the same impact as when it does when you start the album. If it worked, you tell me! (laughs) I definitely think it adds to the structure of the album and the general atmosphere full of dread and darkness.

The lyrics to „Grotesque“ are simply hilarious. How did you come up with the idea, did you even experience a cruel „Jalapeño disaster“ yourself?
Well, we had to compensate for “TerrorVision” not having any songs about shit, so we have two on this one! “Grotesque” was literally written, lyric-wise, in about fifteen minutes and it was just the silliest things I could come up with at the time. That idea was simply someone dying from eating the world’s most deadly burrito bowl, causing said jalapeno disaster, if you catch my drift. Also thank you, I am pride myself of this one.

The „ManiaCult“ video really made me laugh at the Fake News, for example „Vaccines proven to turn people magnetic“ with the picture of Magneto is pure gold. How did you come up with the idea of the fake news video and how bitter is it that they are all based on real beliefs of specific people?
How did I come up with the idea? Have you looked around lately? It’s all around us, we live in an age of disinformation and it’s one of the worst things that has happened in the last whatever years. It’s insane to see people go down the rabbit hole and be so convinced by these insane things. Also note that there are multiple news items in the video which are actually true, try to find them! You’d be surprised!

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When the message „Watching 80s slasher films proven to increase intellect“ shows up, I instantly thought that this could not be Fake News. I would never agree.
No, this is absolutely true. People need to take notice, watch less of the social media garbage you scroll through every day and watch some awesome fantastical films, it’ll make you happier than that scroll of misery!

„Drag Me To Hell“ is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, it is so over the top bloody and brutal and fits your music perfectly. Is the song possibly inspired by the movie?
The song is 100 percent inspired by the movie, I love that movie as well, it’s so over the top and silly and basically embodies what this band is about, over the top and silly! (laughs) When I saw it in theatres when it came out, I had no idea what it would be going into it. I kept saying “Wow, this really has an Evil Dead feeling to it”, turns out it was a Sam Raimi movie, so there we go! Very very underrated film!

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What are your favorite horror/slasher movies of the last few years and of all time?
Hmmm, I really enjoyed Don’t Breathe, Upgrade, Doctor Sleep, Life, Get Out, Us … or when it gets more silly even stuff like Psycho Goreman, The Babysitter or Happy Death Day were all very enjoyable in my opinion. Lots of cool new films coming out, it’s just a matter of finding them. The one thing I miss is those iconic horror figures that have a franchise, it seems like we ran all out of Freddies, Jasons and Michael Myers’ these days (laughs).

You have a lot of energy on stage. Is there a certain ritual of preparing just before a gig?
Not really, I just warm up my voice and stretch a bit, sometimes do some pushups or pullups and well, let the adrenaline and anger flow (laughs)!

Fozzy’s Chris Jericho recently said that he is in sorrow of future festival headlining acts when the likes of Metallica, Maiden or Priest are gone. What’s your point on that? Do you follow some younger bands that could possibly fill the spot one day?
I think the only reason to be in that spot is that it’s always been the same bands that get put in the headlining spot, for decades. So you never really “created” new headliners or gave other bands the opportunity to get in that spot. Obviously those bands are all great and deserve the utmost respect, but I think the fact that some people in the industry now need to freak out about we won’t have headliners at some point, is simply their own doing. It’s easy to not take risks and always book the same headliners, that’s all I’m saying … In the end, the music fans are hungry and love going to festivals, plenty of amazing talented bands out there, it will not mean the death of music.

You seem to travel a lot. Which are your favorite spots and where do you want to go you haven’t been so far?
(laughs) Yes and no! I traveled a lot with the band since we tour quite often. But that just means you see a lot of venues in different cities… which means nothing. To be honest, the last years Stefano and I have made it a point to always go visit the cities that we play at. Out of those I think for sure Vilnius, Tallinn, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris and so on come to mind!

As a passionate gamer, which kind of video games do you like most and which platform do you play on? Are you organized somehow, or do you just play on your own?
I play on PS5 and Xbox series S, though I rarely turn on the Xbox. I play with several friends from the bands that I am in and friends from all over the world. Right now I’m mainly playing Alien Fireteam, which is good fun with friends. I usually like either multiplayer stuff with  friends like Overwatch or Borderlands or good stories. Stuff like the last God of War or Horizon Zero dawn were fantastic.

Let’s conclude with our traditional brainstorming. What comes to your mind first when you read the following words?
Current favorite album: “Valde” from Humanity’s Last Breath
Old school: Entombed
Climate: Please send help
Coffee: Never too much coffee, coffee is the juice of life
Marvel or DC: Ss that even a question? Marvel
Something that makes every bad day better:  Pets
Aborted in 10 years: Hopefully alive and still kicking ass and taking names!

Thank you once again for your time! The last words are all yours. Is there anything left you want to tell our readers?
Thank you for the interview and support! Check out “ManiaCult”! My other project Coffin Feeder has an EP called “Stereo Homicide” coming out this Halloween, make sure to check it out. And Fetal Blood Eagle releases its debut album on Listenable Records in February! See you guys on the Hell over Europe Tour in February and March!

Publiziert am 4. Oktober 2021 von Stefan Popp