With drums & guitars done in Cleveland OH, bass guitars in Vancouver, BC and vocals laid down in Tel Aviv, Israel; this is truly an internationally made album and band. Dirk Verbeuren (SOILWORK) is doing double duty with the guitar, it shows he’s more than just a drummer. He wrote the damned album! DEVIN TOWNSEND laid down some solid bass lines & Sven De Caluwe (ABORTED,SYSTEM DIVIDE) well, does what Sven does! The band has since added SHANE EMBURY from NAPALM DEATH as the new bassist for the next album, which they are already working on. Originally self- released last fall, it will be re-issued this summer by Tankcrimes in a special package. It’s grindcore at its best. Clocking in at 17 minutes long, it gets to the point on every song. Let’s check out Noistalgia right now.
If you get the physical CD, the booklet has one sentence introductions to each song, just so you’re not misled by anything. From songs about blast beats like “Blast Beat Barrage” and technological advances in“Digital Disaster”, you are also treated to all the social commentary you’d expect since this is just one big ole love letter to the genre. It basically says that in the name of the title track, “An homage to grindcore and noise”. As fun as short songs are, I do wish the song “In One Word” was longer. I would’ve loved to hear what other band names they could have tossed in there. Based on just the bass line alone, “Sustained Idiocy” just makes me want to punch something. Dirk’s SOILWORK band mate Sylvain Coudret, comes in and throws a cool guitar solo in your face on “Dead Meat”. “Fool for Life” is the longest track (4:06) and gives the album some added weight. It ends with a lovely rendition of “Bullshit Propaganda” in honor of the mighty EXTREME NOISE TERROR.
They managed to cram this album full of greatness in a short amount of time. I’m not sure if throwback is the right description for this, but this does make you remember the early days of grindcore (only with better production- thank you Devy!). With Noistalgia, BENT SEA came, saw and kicked ass. Not only did I like it, I bought it!
Metal Army caught up with Sven de Caluwé, the charismatic front man of death metal and gore gods ABORTED. On the eve of the release of their excellent new album Global Flatline (Century Media). Sven shared his thoughts on the new record, songwriting, choosing producers, making videos and playing in several different bands at once.
Justin Osbourn did the artwork for Global Flatline.
MAA: Congradulations on Global Flatline! How have the changes in the line up of the band affected the new record?
SVEN: Well, I think it influenced things quite a bit. It felt like there was a fresh spirit in the band. People who are really motivated to work and everyone is happy to be there. Only Mike (Wilson) joined right before the album. Everybody else in the band was involved for two years or a bit more. It went great! Everybody put in a great effort which was good.
MAA: The trademark sound of the band is still there, but I hear some experimentation musically as well. Was that intentional?
SVEN: Not really. Actually the main intention of this record was to go back to something more visceral and more extreme than the last two records we did, which I think we succeeded in. At the same time we also wanted to do things on a different level to add a more melodic aspect, I guess. Yes there are melodies, but we did it in a way where it is more dark sounding rather than sound Swedish or riffy or whatever if you want to call it that. We wanted to stay away from that type of stuff which is boring. There are also some new things like guitar textures and some doomy riffs we have never tried before.
MAA: Some of the guitar work has an almost classic metal feel. Is that Eran Segal really asserting himself now as a writer?
SVEN: Yeah! The biggest part of the record was written by me, Eran, and J.B. (Van Der Wal) the bass player. I would go to Eran’s place and for a long time we did that, worked on ideas. Then Eran and J.B. Flew out here for a few weeks to work on more songs. The three of us worked together for a long time. Ken Bedene wrote one song and Mike Wilson wrote another song so it really came together. It’s a group effort, but definitely Eran’s work was great being that he has been in the band longer now and he really found a space to contribute a lot of songs as you said.
MAA: You worked again with Jacob Hansen who has made some of the best ABORTED albums. Why bring him back in this time around?
SVEN: First of all, we brought him back in because we are familiar with him since we have stayed in touch for years.. Plus he recorded my other band SYSTEM DIVIDE two years ago. Since he did the Goremageddon album and shit he’s improved vastly as a producer since he has done stuff outside of metal too, and a lot of those bands that have gotten very big. Knowing the band and knowing what we were going for was huge. His work for SYSTEM DIVIDE really sealed the deal for me to go with him for this record because I knew exactly what to expect. It was a great experience. It was kind of nostalgic in some ways to go back there and work with him again, watch him in the recording and mixing process. He’s such a good guy and an amazing producer so we really had a blast.
Songs from the Coronary Reconstruction EP wound up on the new album.
MAA: Is Global Flatline a concept album? A lot of song lyrics, titles and samples seem to be quite anti-religion.
SVEN: It’s not really a concept record. The only song that is actually anti-religion is “Our Father, Who Art of Feces”. The album is really about the end of mankind through mankind. As you can see on the cover artwork we were trying to suggest some of the ways that man will end the world. Religion is one of the big ones since it is very prominent in the foreground of the art.
MAA: “The Origin of Disease” video is totally sick. Tell us about the making of the video.
SVEN: It was quite a trip. It was shot in the UK. We played the Party-San festival in Germany. We drove to Holland to catch a plane. Flew into the UK and shot the video. I think we performed the song 40 times in eight hours! Then we drove to Amsterdam and played the Summer Breeze festival that afternoon, the same day. It was crazy!
MAA: I bet after that the song was perfect live that night!
SVEN: Oh we didn’t play it that day at the show. I think if we did we would have killed ourselves.
MAA: Well it worked out. The end of the video is so disturbing I couldn’t look away!
SVEN: (laughs) Great! Thanks!
MAA: You seem to be very busy between ABORTED, SYSTEM DIVIDE and other projects like BENT SEA. How do you keep your vocal chops in shape?
SVEN: That’s a good question. When I’m not on tour we don’t practice since no one lives close to each other. So I actually don’t do shit! (laughs) We were writing a lot so we took our time with that. ABORTED will start touring from February onward so right now we are very busy. We also just finished a tour in Europe. We are busy, but we work in concentrated periods since everybody lives abroad.
MAA: Even though Dirk Verbeuren (SOILWORK) had to step away from ABORTED, will you still work together in BENT SEA?
SVEN: Oh, of course! Right after we tracked the new ABORTED album, we recorded the new BENT SEA album. So yeah!
MAA: The band has some amazing tours booked, including OVERKILL and THE NEW ENGLAND METAL AND HARDCORE FESTIVAL. You haven’t been to the states in while, right?
SVEN: It’s been since 2008 since we have been to the states. We are really excited to get back out there!
On the heels of the epic ELUVEITIE tour announcement, HOLY GRAIL has now unveiled their first proper music video. “My Last Attack” comes from the band’s debut, ‘Crisis in Utopia’, and is an ultimate tribute to TRUE traditional heavy metal.
Feb. 01 – Theatre of Living Arts – Philadelphia, PA
Feb. 02 – The Gramercy Theater – New York, NY
Feb. 03 – The Palladium – Worcester, MA
Feb. 04 – Cercle – Quebec City, QC
Feb. 05 – Le National – Montreal, QC
Feb. 06 – The Opera House – Toronto, ON
Feb. 08 – The Bottom Lounge – Chicago, IL
Feb. 09 – Station 4 – Saint Paul, MN
Feb. 10 – Granada Theater – Lawrence, KS
Feb. 11 – Maquis Theater – Denver, CO
Feb. 12 – Club Sound – Salt Lake City, UT
Feb. 14 – El Corazon – Seattle, WA
Feb. 15 – Rickshaw Theatre – Vancouver, BC
Feb. 16 – Hawthorne Theatre – Portland, OR
Feb. 17 – Slims – San Francisco, CA
Feb. 18 – The Key Club – Hollywood, CA
Feb. 19 – Nile Theater – Mesa, AZ
Feb. 21 – Backstage Live – San Antonio, TX
Feb. 22 – Warehouse Live – Houston, TX
Feb. 24 – State Theatre – Saint Petersburg, FL
Feb. 25 – Firestone Live – Orlando, FL
Feb. 26 – The Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
Most of the time the metal shows come to your home town and you find out about when it’s going down and then you go. However, sometimes you have to go where the metal show is when it is not coming to your town. This was the case when I found out ABORTED was coming to Canada, but not the USA. Since ABORTED hasn’t been played the states for a few years and this was as close as they were coming to me. When me and my friends found out about the show we made our plans and hit the road from Boston to Quebec City. We got into town after about 9 hours on the road and hit the ground running. The listing for the show said 8 PM, but it turned out the first band wasn’t going on until 10:30 at the earliest so we walked around the city and grabbed a bite to eat.
Bar Octobre is one of the coolest little bars I have ever been to and is designed to look like a dungeon with stone walls and crazy metal-inspired art everywhere. We met some cool local folks and it didn’t matter that me and my friends didn’t know any French- we all spoke the language of metal. It also helped that many of them spoke English too. The rowdy Quebecois were all amped up for the night of death metal craziness to come and many were drinking beer right out of pitchers! The first band of the night was local band HERODE. Playing a mix of technical and straight up old-school death metal, they were a big hit. I was especially impressed with their vocalist Yann Marcil who had an amazing voice and stage presence. Finishing their short set with the excellent track “I’ll Be Your God”, HERODE left me feeling like a band definitely worth checking out further.
Next up was SYSTEM DIVIDE. The interesting thing about this band is if you didn’t already know it featured Sven de Calwe and Cole Martinez of ABORTED you might not know the two acts were related. Created as a project between Sven and his wife Miri, the band is an attempt at a heavier, death metal-inspired version of LACUNA COIL mixed with FEAR FACTORY. The results are generally mixed with the occasional good blast-beat laden heavy part combined with the goth-flavored verses and choruses. Their typical song has a heavy intro with Sven screaming his head off and Miri singing the verses, working off his lines. However, their lines do more clashing than intertwining for the most part. Sven’s vocals in this group are almost deliberately different from his other notable work and that is part of the let down. Miri has a decent enough voice, but was nervous and apologized at one point for it being her “first time”. I do know they have played barely a handful of show in total so I’m sure they will get better in time. The one song they played that I did like all the way through was “The Apex Doctrine”. They have some potential here with this kind of talent and a style that would garner notice if put together better, but so far it is unrealized.
Vocalist Sven De Caluwé of death metal psychopaths ABORTED was recently interviewed by “The Red Switch” show, which airs on York University’s CHRY 105.5 FM radio station in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. You can now watch the chat in two parts below.
ABORTED’s recent “Machines Of Grind/Terrorizer Tourture” European tour with ROTTEN SOUND was the first trek featuring the band’s new lineup, which released a new EP entitled “Coronary Reconstruction”. The EP got released on a limited-edition digipack sold through the band and Indiemerch containing four new tracks and a cover of ENTOMBED’s “Left Hand Path”.
ABORTED new lineup features Sven De Caluwé (also of SYSTEM DIVIDE) on vocals, Dirk Verbeuren (SOILWORK) on drums, Eran Segal (ex-THEY SWARM/WHORECORE) and Ken Sorceron (ABIGAIL WILLIAMS) on guitar and Cole Martinez (SYSTEM DIVIDE) on bass.
The artwork for Coronary Reconstruction was created by Justin Osbourn from Slasher design and comprises the most gruesome and disgusting art the band ever had.
We are the almighty drunkards, Bro Jovi, from the US. Bro Jovi is a rabid alcohol fueled beast, and is comprised of ex- and current members of ABIGAIL WILLIAMS (Candlelight Records), ABORTED (Century Media Records), and SYSTEM DIVIDE (Metal Blade Records).
Our debut album, Songs to Crush Beers to Vol. I : Slippery When Blacked, was recorded in late Fall of 2009 and is hot and ready for mass international consumption! The album was tracked and mixed at Conquistador Studios (Cleveland, OH) by producer/engineer Cole Martinez (System Divide, Aborted, Abigail Williams) while all artwork/layout duties were handled by Avernus Studios, otherwise known as the infamous, Sven De Caluwe (Aborted, System Divide).
We have posted three songs to whet your foul appetites and we hope it invokes a reaction of wretching, vomiting, twitching uncontrollably, or worse! Prepare yourselves for armageddon!
