Aborted Lost $60,000 on Canceled Tour, Won’t Launch Crowdfunding Campaign
Aborted frontman Sven de Caluwé recently joined us for a quick chat on The MetalSucks Quarantinecast, a new series in which we’ve been speaking to metal musicians around the globe who are currently on lockdown and going insane like the rest of us.
The death metallers just released an EP, La Grande Mascarade, and had a North American tour with Napalm Death scheduled before the rug was pulled out from underneath them. To say they’ve been in the thick of it and that the timing was especially bad is an understatement.
Sven revealed the economics of what a tour cancelation at Aborted’s level looks like, and it’s not pretty: between merch that had already been printed, flights that had already been booked and visas that had been obtained but now will likely never be used (they last for one year), Sven estimates the band is out about $60,000. He explains:
“What really sucked is that we made all these expenses for the Napalm Death tour which we were very excited to do, of course. Of course, this shit happens and now we’ve got a quite hefty bill to pay so hopefully that gets taken care of and we can move on. Obviously expenses are higher when you’re on the road, but you get revenue from it too. Now we have zero revenue and we had our merch bill, which was roughly a little bit less than $40,000.
“We knew some stuff [related to the coronavirus] was going on so preemptively with IndieMerch we decided to wait until the last possible moment to print the tour shirts. So fortunately there was nothing with tour dates [printed on it]. But all the other merch was printed and there’s quite a bit of it, so that totals up to about $40,000.
“Then, we already had a deposit on the bus, we had all our flights booked. We paid I think a little over $10,000 on U.S. work visas. So all together we’re looking at losing $60,000.
“The shittiest part is the work visas, because that’s $10,000. We asked if we could get a refund or an extension of the period because it’s $10,000 for one year and… nope.”
In spite of those financial hardships, the band does not plan on extending a cup of loose change via a crowdfunding campaign:
“We have all the merch available on IndieMerch, so if people want to buy some stuff that they had planned on buying on tour, please go ahead: it’ll help us a lot. At the same time, I don’t think it’s my place to tell people where to spend their money. There’s a lot of people being laid off, waiting for checks to come in, and it’s tough for everybody. Its more important to me to know that fans be safe, make sure you’re OK, and everything will get back to normal.
“We’re not going to do a GoFundMe or ask for money because I don’t think now is the time to do so. We’ll do what we can to be OK. Support us in any way you can if you have some spare income, buy a shirt, but I’m not going to ask for money.”
Those wishing to help support Aborted can check out their wide array of sick merch right here. Crank La Grande Mascarade below while you shop or listen to our full chat with Sven via either the audio embed or YouTube if you’d like to see our faces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoohMSOLg5Q
