Aborted

support By The Patient
author MST date 14/07/11 venue The Rock, Copenhagen, DEN

On a regular Thursday evening, a red Ford Fiesta was parked in Copenhagen after having driven 300 kilometers from Silkeborg to Copenhagen. It contained the undersigned, Marika 'MH' Hyldmar and two of our friends. The occasion: the Belgian deathgrinders in Aborted playing their first show in a year. The band had been in Denmark for a while recording their upcoming album "Global Flatline" at Hansen Studios, and their stay here was to end with two shows in our tiny country. Two days after their gig at The Rock, they attended Day of Decay in Aalborg. "So why didn't you just go see them in Aalborg?" I hear you asking. Why settle for a single show with one of your favorite bands when you can see two?! But that's a different story, one that you can read in a feature article in a few days. For now, however, let us see what Aborted and local danish support band By The Patient had to offer at The Rock.

By The Patient

I've somehow managed to completely overlook By The Patient for a long time, so I had no idea what they sounded like when they took the stage around 21:00. As it turns out, they play an awesome mix of modern death metal a la Job For A Cowboy with some tremolo riffs thrown in for good measure. The two guitarists, stationed on the two corners of the stage, played a seemingly never ending array of technical riffs, solos and tremolo riffs, but sadly the sound at The Rock screwed the guitars up a bit, making the riffs hard to hear in the mix. Other than that though, the sound was pretty good throughout the set. The band played material from their EP and full-length, and two songs from their upcoming album that sounded pretty damn sweet. When it comes to their live performance however, By The Patient could really benefit from being less stationary. At times, it seemed as if their feet were welded to the floor. Even the singer stayed in his spot, never getting away from the two monitors in front of him. The band reacted a bit too much to the very scarce attendance and the minimal activity of said attendants, but it was still a good show that convinced me to buy their debut from 2010 (hell, they only charged 40 DKK. for it).

7

Aborted

For those not in the know, Aborted play semi-melodic goregrind/death metal with lyrical themes such as serial killing, (insane) surgical procedures and gore. The songs on their setlist included titles like "Nailed Through Her Cunt", "Meticulous Invagination" and "Sanguine Verses (of Extirpation)". After seeing founder and singer (and only current member who has been on more than one out of the band's six albums) Sven "Svencho" de Caluwé, I'm surprised the stories told in the lyrics aren't his own memories; he has the eyes and demeanor of a murderous lunatic while on stage, occasionally hitting himself on the forehead multiple times when running and jumping around the stage. Between songs, however, he seemed completely sane and stable and interacted with the audience. But like By The Patient, Aborted were very stationary during the whole show. You'd almost think that the bands were somehow forbidden from walking around too much, because the stage at The Rock is reasonably sized (and Svencho walked around more at Day of Decay two days later on a smaller stage) but no one on stage ever changed places or walked past each other. Aborted were a lot more active though; bassist Cole Martinez was headbanging, jumping and swinging his bass around. But the main attraction was still Svencho who would often almost headbutt people on the front row.

First song played was the first song off "The Archaic Abattoir", "Dead Wreckoning". It seemed as if Svencho didn't have enough air for the vocal lines in this song, as he would often just do the latter half of a sentence. This problem was no where to be found on any of the other songs though, so it was a minor problem. The band only played songs from three of their six albums, namely "Engineering the Dead", "Goremageddon" and "The Archaic Abattoir". Personally I would've liked some songs off "The Purity of Perversion" and "Slaughter & Apparatus", but I thank the goregrind Gods that there were no songs off "Strychnine.213", because I think it is an over-melodic abomination. Two songs off the band's recent EP "Coronary Reconstruction" (that entire EP will be on the upcoming album) were played, as well as the title track to the band's recently recorded upcoming new album "Global Flatline". Despite the considerably small amount of people present at the venue, only a small part of the attending audience dared venture out in front of the stage. The scarce amount of activity in the crowd affected the band, and they even looked a little bored at first, but after a few songs there was energy in the faces of the band members. Towards the end they started to look a bit tired though, but after all it was the band's first gig in a year. In conclusion, Aborted played a good show that would've benefited from more moving around on stage and more activity in the crowd. I picked up the vinyl version of "The Archaic Abattoir" on the way out and eagerly awaited the Aborted show that I would be seeing at Day of Decay two days later.

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