Sven: It’s going alright. I mean, we had to deal with the fact that The Acacia Strain cancelled less than a week before the tour – we had to deal with not being able to find a replacement. Obviously in the UK it’s affected the draws quite a lot because they’re pretty popular here. But we’re doing fine – we’ve done OK with everything so far, considering. On the weekdays we’ve had about 100 people, which is more than I expected, honestly. That’s alright for the UK on a weekday. I don’t know about tonight, we’ll see – hopefully it will be good. And we’re having a good time, that’s all that matters.

This is your first headlining tour of Europe. How come it took so long?

Sven: Because we never wanted to take the risk but you know, it’s been building up and building up. Now obviously is not the best time to do it as well because it’s June and all that but you know, we thought what the heck, we’ll give it a try.

You’re ending up at Hellfest. Have you thought much about that yet? It’s a while away still but are there any bands you’re really looking forward to seeing?

 Sven: I have no idea who’s playing at Hellfest.

I’m not sure who’s playing on the same day as you but the line-up’s looking generally good.

Sven: I know that I got friends from Kataklysm, … , Black Dahlia Murder and Whitechapel will be there so we’ll have a good time no matter what. I think Lamb of God is playing the same day.

On to the latest album – Strychnine.213 – who came up with the name?

Sven: I came up with the name. Originally it was just going to be entitled Carrion and then some band already had Carrion apparently and then we did Carrion.213 but that didn’t sound too well so we changed it to Strychnine.

A lot of extreme bands go for lyrics that are designed to shock and even offend people sometimes but it seems that you have a genuine interest in the topic of the album, which is true crime and serial killers.

Sven: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I’d been researching that already for a bunch of years. It’s not like I really give a shit about shocking people. It’s violent music, it needs violent lyrics – I cannot sing about the fucking love boat, as much as I’d love to, you know… I love the love boat.

So at what sort of age did you become interested in the whole topic of serial killers?

Sven: I did some research when I was about sixteen so that’s a long time ago. As a kid you always get drunk to obscure things. Either you go for Satanism, or gore, or whatever, and I always thought that true crime was pretty interesting so I read a lot of books with a friend of mine; we were kind of obsessed back then. Actually, you know the band Leng ‘Tche? He was the original singer. We were best friends for like ten years and we did a lot of research together, read a lot of FBI books, that kind of shit.

The album artwork’s received quite a lot of positive feedback, I’ve noticed. Can you tell me a bit about that? Whose idea it was?

Sven: I came up with the concept and Colin Marx ***?*** did it. He’s from London actually, he’ll be at the show I think tonight. I think he did an amazing job. We told him we wanted something with tits on there, and he did a great job! Everybody likes tits.

You’re a graphic designer yourself. Do you design album covers?

Sven: Yeah, I did Engineering the Dead and I do a big part of our merch; I did the new *** album cover that’s coming out on Nuclear Blast; I did the last couple of Immolation records. I do as much as I can. I’m a *** designer for Listenable Records so most of their bands I end up doing the work for. I don’t like doing too many album covers or CD layouts for Aborted because it’s always weird to work for your own band. You don’t have that distance from it, you know, so I end up taking way too much time if it’s for Aborted.

Yeah, I can understand that. Over the years there have been a lot of changes in the line up. Do you see that as a negative thing?

Sven: I see it more as a necessary thing. If something doesn’t work then you need to fix it, it’s as simple as that and sometimes it’s a shame that it doesn’t work but that’s how life is and life goes on. We live in Belgium. It’s very small and there’s not that much there. Especially, for example, drummers – there’s no drummers that could play this shit to be honest and so we always had to branch out and when you’re in a band that tours for a certain amount of months of the year and try to do certain things, it requires a certain level of determination and motivation that you do it for the band. There’s not a lot of money in it – you can’t make a living out of playing in Aborted or playing death metal, simple as that. But some people get the idea that they can and after a while they’re like ‘well, if I don’t get enough money then I’m not going to do this’. So then you’re like ‘I’m sorry but as much as I’d love to make this money and give you this money, it’s simply not possible’. You get to the point where you have to part ways, and it sucks.

Obviously Aborted have a lot of influences from all over the place like most good bands but could you pinpoint maybe one or two bands that have helped shape the way that you play and write music?

Sven: If there are two bands that I have to pinpoint it has to be Suffocation and Carcass.

You toured with Carcass last year. How was that?

Sven: That was cool, it was good fun.

How did you get into that in the first place?

Sven: I think our manager hooked it up. We knew Jack???, he did some guest vocals for us on Slaughter & Apparatus so it was good times!

It seems like you’ve got quite a good relationship with your fans, for example with the video blog on your Myspace and I know Dan’s recorded some drumming exercises for people to copy. And of course there’s also the Aborted Army, although I haven’t seen any of them here yet tonight, how did that all start?

Sven: That was absolutely not our idea. It was a guy from here(?) called Chris, he started this thing at Hellfest and has been carrying it on since. It’s been really cool! The guy did a really cool job for us, it’s amazing. And as far as being close to our fans goes I really think it’s a necessity for bands. I mean, sure, you can play the rock star distance thing, whatever, but I don’t think that works because I’m a strong believer that without fans a band is nothing.

 I agree. I heard rumours that you recorded a cover of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’…

Sven: Yeah, we did. Michael Jackson banned us from releasing it – his management. When you do a cover you need to send it to the management or the publisher to check if it’s alright and it was a no-go. Probably because of the band name, as he’s super into Jesus and whatnot. We’ve had some issues in the US with people thinking that Aborted is automatically linked with abortion, which is absolutely not the case – we took the band name because it has many meanings. But yeah, we can’t even release it on the internet, which is a shame because I think it turned out fucking awesome. It was funny to add blast beats and breakdowns to ‘Beat It’.

I was trying to play it through – what it might sound like – in my head and I can imagine it might work.

Sven: It turned out cool, it’s just a shame that we can’t release it. Sorry.

You mentioned about the band name; I just assumed that it was to do with abortion.

Sven: That’s what everyone assumes.

It does have that shock factor, though, doesn’t it?

Sven: Well, that’s what I like about it. It’s the first thing that people assume it’s about so some people get offended but it at least plays on the imagination, you know, and we don’t have to justify anything as there are many reasons and meanings to it.

OK, well that’s it. Thanks very much, I’m looking forward to the show!