Aborted
17th September 2018
Whammy! Back Room, Auckland, New Zealand.
Review by Kate Taylor. Digital Painting by Leon Taylor.
What’s great about a Monday night Metal gig is that everyone that attends really wants to be there; it’s a collection of dedicated and passionate fans manifesting to expunge the mediocrity of life together. Returning to Auckland after a four-year break, the mighty Aborted descended on the Backroom at Whammy Bar to deliver their special concoction of death metal, thrash and grindcore to those rabid Monday stalwarts that weren’t going to miss the opportunity to give themselves whiplash to Belgium’s finest.
Launching into the evening Christchurch’s Decimated King have been working at it since 2007 and gave us an accomplished set that surprised. Moving through shades and tones of death metal through their set, the Auckland reception for them was a warm one as they carefully used tension and pace in their songs to create a varied set that they delivered quickly and professionally. Working towards the release of their album Dead Air; we were given the title track of this forth comer as the third song last night and the slow burn effect of this rumbling set piece had the early crowd shaking and jolting along. Moving into new areas of groove; Decimated King birthed a couple of melodic instrumental heavy tracks that had this kind of nu-metal adjacency that I really liked; look I know that’s probably a bit of an insult in the perceptions of some, but I really dug it. Along with some undeniably classic death metal styles on display that conjured up feels for pre-Roots Sepultura or even perhaps Dethklok…which, c’mon we all love don’t we?! To be honest any band line-up that features someone wearing a King Parrot singlet on stage rates highly with me (nice one Brad!) and I’m looking forward to Decimated King playing the 09 again soon.
Ahhh Carnal. New Zealand’s worst kept, brutal tech death metal secret took to stage to bring us their sadistic ferociousness. Seeping out of Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland; Carnal recently returned from a successful pillaging mission to the U.S. and tonight, were relaxed and precise as they warmed us up for Aborted. Like a necrotic flesh-eating virus, Jesse’s riffs burrow into your cerebellum and begin multiplying their cells into the nape of your neck, making you wildly windmill until you can’t get a full range of motion on your head turn anymore. Fyfe’s fingers hungrily search his bass with frenetic pace seeking out new crevices for him to molest with his extremities. Leon just makes it look effortless, barely breaking a sweat as he dishes out the punishment to his skins, Atlanta Hawks cap perched on his head as his delivers blast beats that cleanse your soul. All the while arguably New Zealand’s best and favourite vocalist; Mr. Dan Birrell stalks the front of stage like the hellhound he is; growling and snarling and as one online admirer complimented him, his unique vocal tone and style makes one picture a Predator instructing a Xenomorph to grab it’s ankles and say it’s final prayers as it’s reamed into oblivion. Fun aside, Carnal just keep getting better and better and I can’t think of any NZ death metal band that is as loved, as respected, as revered as Carnal; so proceed directly to their Big Cartel page and buy all their merch so they can continue their plan for world aural domination and take their nasty, heavy and intricate work to metal experts across the globe.
In the swampy but delightful red washed Backroom we eagerly awaited Aborted to bring the noise and their consistently innovative style of death metal to us. Formed in 1995, Aborted continue to find new ways to inflict brutal gore on their fans and last night in Auckland was a celebration of good music but also good times. All those Monday night intransigents put on their best head banging at the instruction of the formidable Sven as he encouraged the crowd to create a circle pit that kissed each wall of the room as it churned, there was even a cheeky wee wall of death at one point that honestly had more smiles on the faces of the cannon fodder throwing themselves at each other than tough-guy frowns. Of course pitiless death metal was the order of the evening but Sven really was excited about New Zealand’s use of the word…cunt. “I love it, in Australia and here in New Zealand are really the only two places in the world where you can say cunt on stage and you don’t get in trouble for it” says Sven.
Obviously, hilariously, this meant that everyone in the room wanted to show Sven their best use of the word and during any song breaks you could hear chirps of the word on it’s own or worked into delightful little phrases…we were all huh huh-ing along like Beavis and Butthead and damn it felt good to be a death metal nerd at that moment. Best use of the word goes to Sven though. As Sven announced that Aborted will treat us to some never seen in NZ, new tracks from the Retrogore album, the crowed bayed for more old songs, in his refined Belgian accented English; Sven smoothly says “No, shut up cunts” and we all giggled at his playing along with our silliness. In fact, the whole performance from Aborted was heart-warming, fun and silly. I’m sure they’d say it was the jetlag talking; they have after all arrived here in NZ for a multiple date tour before embarking on their OZ tour with The Black Dahlia Murder. However, I like to think that they, like their fans, are just a bunch of guys who might be a little bit nerdy, are definitely funny and who are devoted to their craft, to metal and to enjoying it with like-minded pit rats.
For an example of Sven’s delicious humour; before kicking into Bit by Bit, Sven heralded “…this song is about Pokémon. In the way that it’s about killing people…you’ve got to catch them all.” It was around this time; to be honest time was sort of lost to me in the sea of armpits and limbs throwing up the goats; that the wall of death was instituted and as a punter lost their phone to the pit some lovely gent proceeded to stand up the front and turn to the crowd and hold up the phone, patiently with a serene but expressionless face…he kept it up for the entire track and best of all, it attracted Sven’s attention, who locked eyes with the phone bearer and was like “What are you doing with that?” Dude holding the phone just looked at Sven and shrugged and kept on proffering it to the pit. Delightful. But it wasn’t all just lols and good times. It’s completely possibly to lose yourself in the mastery of Mendel Bij De Leij as he creates both atmospheric chuggy variance and the blistering solos that we love Aborted for. Ian, Ken and Stefano knit it all together into a propulsive death metal stew as Sven slaughters like an entity hellbent on destruction, within the skin of a man. Violently shaking his head back and forth, lips and jowls seeming to separate from his face as he thrashes from side to side, using his hand like a squeegee to strike the sweat from his face, or to clasp the skull of a front row pit rat and quaking it as he drills his eyes into theirs.
Aborted have the ability to show exactly why they have such a devoted following; by demonstrating their fearsome prowess for death metal and their inclusive sense of humour, fans in Christchurch, Wellington and indeed Australia better get onto buying their tickets if they haven’t already as Aborted’s latest visit will be the “Why weren’t you there?!” gigs of Spring 2018. Get into it you cunts.
Were you there at Whammy! Backroom for this brutal death metal gig? Or have you seen Aborted perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!
Setlist:
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