H:I0:K: Well, you have to consider that in the meantime me and Fabban released 2 albums with Malfeitor and played with them at various gigs in Italy and Europe while trying to fix the problems in the line-up of both bands, so this long break in Aborym wasn't a break at all for us. But we are back and that's what matters.

PW: The Aborym line up has always been in a state of flux. I am assuming it has been due to commitments members have had in other bands, as you have had a few luminaries such as Attila and Set Teitan take part previously. I was surprised to hear that Prime Evil had left and you took over with the vocals. Did you look for another vocalist or was it just a case of deciding that you may as well grab the reins now?

Fabban: Luminaries? Hahahah…this is a good one. I decided to sing on this album because I was feeling particularly inspired. Explaining the vocal lines I had in my mind to another person would have been nearly impossible, that’s why I decided to do it by myself and well, the results are fantastic. I’m absolutely satisfied with the vocal lines of this album. Preben (Prime Evil) had more important things to do in his life, as it should be. We never had problems with him, but things change in life, you know. About Attila… well, he’s not been part of Aborym for ages now. We’re completely fine this way. We have different opinions about music. We don’t play to make money. Set Teitan who? Is it the name of a car?

PW: The other big change is new guitarist, keyboard player Paolo "Hell-I0-Kabbalus" Pieri who has been involved in plenty of other bands. How much contribution did he make as far as the writing process is concerned and what do you think of the stability of the new line up?

Fabban: With him we could realize in few months what we couldn’t realize with the past guitar players in 7/8 years. H:IO:K is a professional musician, a person with whom it’s just a pleasure to make music. Too bad not knowing him before. Really a pity.

PW: I take it there was no problem for Bård G. "Faust" Eithun finding the time to fit in drumming again; he seems to manage to juggle a million things at once?

Faust: Well, in reality I have only Mongo Ninja and Aborym at the moment. Mongo has released three albums since the start in July 2009 (!) and we do gigs quite often here in Norway so naturally that band takes up a lot of my time, but since Aborym is to be considered a studio band it is not any problem finding time for it. But of course, I have a job and family as well so it is a challenge finding time for everything.

PW: Tell us a bit about the writing of the new album. I suppose in a way it is thematically a concept album; was this an idea you have had in mind for some time?

H:I0:K: Well, it was quite challenging for us composing this album, mainly because you have both to preserve the sound of a band with 20 years of history, and to add something new and something of your own writing style, so we were really under pressure and always checking with patience and attention every single note to be sure it worked well. Keep also in mind that this album, although split into ten tracks, is actually one single opus from the beginning to the end, and it has been quite difficult to find the right cohesion along the 50+ minutes of this album.

PW: The story is set in a mental hospital and an uncomfortable look into the fragility of the human mind. I take it your interest is as an outsider looking in, rather than being a place that you have found yourself in?

Fabban: No. the mental house is just a metaphor that I used to represent, through the entire story, modern society, our system. Psychogrotesque is a sort of novel told through the music, a sort of film, with different lapses of time, pauses, cinematic dynamics, effects, suspense, dead moments and other much more violent and destabilizing moments. I’ve never had anything to do with mental houses, because they closed down many years ago in Italy, but if you try to apply the concept of a mental house to the modern world, there you go, you’ll find a place for my story.

PW: I like the way that you set up the atmosphere to pretty much portray the turmoil of the place. Musically the album is quite schizophrenic with lots going on; one could even call it unhinged. After the opening part I noted a deluge of sound with the saxophone in particular striking as though it was illustrating mania and madness. Did you find this ever changing sonic approach easy or difficult to construct around the narrative?

H:I0:K: Well, the songwriting in itself was really challenging. I had to change radically the way I work, as I had to keep in mind the whole composition instead of a single song, and you have to do it in a way so that every piece in this mosaic is coherent with each other so that they can show you the complete image. On the other hand, having a narrative behind helped us structuring Psychogrotesque more easily, since the scenario gives you a sort of grid in which you can organize all the music.

Faust: For me it was interesting to see the dramaturgy and the dynamics of the album. The most mainstream and basic parts of the album is on the beginning, whereas as the album proceeds it gets more and more twisted, dark and subliminal. It all ends in a colossal last track which is something of the better in the Aborym history.

PW: I was interested that you collaborated with Marc Urselli on sound consulting. He has worked with the likes of John Zorn and Laurie Anderson and I can kind of hear that influence at play here, how did this come about?

H:I0:K: I think those influences are quite accidental, I know them by fame but never listened to their music. Marc Urselli is an old acquaintance of Fabban since the MEMORY LAB project and helped us with some advice about general sound or mixing, but all the recording was made possible thanks to the fantastic work of Emiliano Natali.

PW: There is a long spoken word part on the album played over soundtrack like ambience. What is that all about, it is obviously lost on those of us that do not talk Italian?

Fabban: It’s a passage taken from the Chants of Maldoror by Lautreamont, a French poet. At that point of the story there’s a specific description of the main character, this non-man who realizes to be something sterile and hopelessly ill. That point of the story is an important crossroad for the album: the awareness. That passage by Lautreamont was simply perfect to emphasize this point of the story, so I decided to use it. That’s it. I used Italian because I believe that my language is particularly appropriate to emphasize such a strong awareness.

PW: There is a certain anonymous feeling created by not giving the tracks actual song titles. Why did you do this, would giving the tracks titles perhaps give too much away to the listener and were you ever tempted to just treat the album as one single piece of music?

H:I0:K: Well, they are like chapters of a novel, it was quite common in the past to order the chapters of a book with roman numerals. When you'll read the lyrics it will make perfect sense. For me the album is just a single song, it had to be split for “commercial” reasons but not listening to it from the beginning to the end really takes out a lot of the general atmosphere.

PW: Davide Tiso and Karyn Crisis guest on the album and there were quite a few other people adding parts and I guess helping add to the schizophrenic nature of the beast. I guess this time round there was a fair bit of ‘Human Intervention’ did all the guests fall into joining the project naturally, were they people you had wanted to work with for a while?

Fabban: Well yes, having the honour to host guests like Karyn Crisis and Davide Tiso it’s a matter of great pride of us. When Crisis split up, Karyn didn’t want to play anymore at an international level. Many bands tried to convince her, but nobody managed to do so. If Karyn is back on the scene through Aborym, there must be a reason. She, as well as all the other guests, gave to our album something special and well, for us these collaborations represented a chance to grow up as well as a cultural enrichment. In music, exchanging opinions and collaborations are essential to grow up. Everyone in this album gave the best of himself. I wouldn’t change a single thing of what they managed to express through Aborym.

Faust: Just to add: the vocals that Karyn adds are truly insane and frightening to the bone. It certainly adds another dimension to the album.

PW: You describe the album as “a work of word alchemy specifically committed to the plunder of literary imaginary.” It has got a feel to it of classic literature but it is very much set in a modern context. Where did inspiration come from exactly?

Fabban: My only great inspiration, what actually pushed me to write a story like this, is the everyday life, my daily careful study on the people I meet everyday. That’s why you’re right when you talk about “modern context” it’s exactly a cross-section of the modern society, a story that talks about universal things, visible to everyone.

PW: At the time of writing this, the album is not quite out yet, I guess you have started to see reviews appearing. What have reactions been like and do you think generally most people will understand where the album is coming from?

H:I0:K: Fantastic so far, the first reviews we received are really enthusiastic, we even got the opportunity from Season Of Mist to release the album on double vinyl LP that will make the collectors go mad, and they are supporting the album with great care. Also the reaction of the fans is really good so far, but the best comment I found on the net was “Psychogrotesque sucks donkey hairy balls” ahahaha

Faust: In Norway the reviews have been good. But I think that where Generator was more organic, warmer and in a sense more commercial, Psycho is colder, darker and more difficult to get under the skin of. I think this has been difficult for reviewers who heard a few times only, but people have told me that the album is definitely a grower.

PW: I remember hearing ‘Kali Yuga Bizarre’ for the first time and really finding it stood out and added new ideas to extreme music. You have always utilised electronic and industrial sounds to your music and even rave sounding parts and bursts of drum and bass. It certainly keeps the listener on their toes, is the experimental sound something you are always looking at expanding on?

H:I0:K: I think experimentation is something you need when you are a real musician. You just can't do the same stuff over and over for all your life, you grow up, you change your way of thinking, your emotions, and what you need to convey in music at 20 is different from what you'll need at 30 or 50. Just look at bands like Iron Maiden or Destruction, they still put out some good stuff but they lack that aggression and inspiration they had in the 80'. People in the metal scene are too narrow minded, always accounting as a betrayer a band that is trying to evolve and change.

PW: This time round there are some other aspects that are also intriguing such as a bit of opera and the musical box. Can you elaborate on these parts? I am guessing they are involved with the narrative structure but not having seen all the lyrics I was wondering quite how these parts fit in?

Fabban: The entire album, as I was saying before, is based on a story - a sort of novel with a proper character and settings. It has been studied as a film. The Man is a metaphor of humanity, while the mental hospital is a metaphor for the world, the system, for our society. A society that generates sterile men, with no strong personalities, a society that offers fake myths and that pushes men to feed themselves with them, every single day, until they reach an absolute sterility, a nearly total impotence in distinguishing what’s good and what’s bad, a disarming alienation in front of social matters, in front of the greatest issues of our time…The only important thing today is just the projection we give to other people of us, it’s not the “US” that matters anymore: people don’t think, they just do. Media keep us constantly under siege so that everyday we become lobotomized slaves manufactured in series. My character turns into a fly, a dirty insect, symbol of filth, a dirty essence. An insect that flies on garbage, on waste, that sooner or later will be crushed. It’s a story that focuses on the fake myths of our time, playing on the psychology of roles, behaviours, actions. They play a game about what they don’t dare to be, they “invest” or “waste” (you choose) loads of money to heal their own psychological problems, instead of the unhealthy ideas that people use to look at themselves with, which they also use to look at different aspects of their lives. People’s problem keep on existing in their own lives, but they do live their lives in fields of power that follow different logics, (money, youth, power, fashion, control..), fields of power that are composed by cities, offices, jobs, economic movements, the schizophrenic frenzy of everyday life, information systems…or, even easier, being part of a membership (a lobby, a musical scene, a small group of lobotomized and cloned people). All this crap transmutes in feelings of failure, impotence, social infertility, a submission not only for the single individual, but also for a community or micro-cosmos. We do everything to emerge, to become what we are not, we use the most infamous tools to fly, pushing apart the real essence of our personalities and our values. I could give you thousands examples, although these things are everywhere, in every kind of society, even in the musical scene (I’d have loads of story about that, oh, you don’t even imagine how many). It’s full of flies outside, my friend, and you know where flies go. I believe it’s very important to ask ourselves few questions, trying to understand where we’re gonna end if we don’t change our minds. I think that the greatest social, political and universal problems, can be found in micro-cosmos, in a single individual. Solutions have to be found inside there.

PW: This also makes me intrigued about what exactly you listen to yourself, I bet you have very varied tastes?

Faust - I am very conservative in my taste and I am basically a metal-head. All time faves are Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Slayer, Poison Idea, Deathspell Omega, Primordial, Mercyful Fate, Mayhem, Kiss, Deep Purple, Motorhead, Sadistic Intent, Metallica up till And Justice for All, AC-DC and so on. But I also listen to a lot of 70s/80s pop and rock, some electronic stuff like Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Bombay Dub Orchestra etc. But anyway, the simplest is often the best.

H:I0:K: In these days I listen a lot to Placebo, Chopin and the last album from Solefald, one of the few interesting release in “metal” music in the last years.

Fabban: I listen pretty much to every kind of music, but not so much black metal so far in the past few years. I listen to loads of rock, hard rock, thrash metal and classical music. Recently, I’ve seen live Guns and Roses and Ozric Tentacles, and in the future I will have the privilege of seeing Roger Waters playing the Wall. I listen to loads of 70s rock, from Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Stooges, Doors, Tangerine Dream, Rainbow...many things. I also listen to loads of heavy metal, .. Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Ac/Dc, Accept, Exciter…pretty much everything.

PW: Are there plans for any live dates and to tour in the future? I am guessing that you could split parts of the album up and play them live or would this not work for you without the album being played as a whole?

Faust: I think it is not very likely that Aborym will play live in the near future. It would demand a too big production - both band wise and concerning additional musicians we would need. At this point the music is too complex to be performed live and it wouldn`t do justice to the albums.

H:I0:K: I don't think there will be another Aborym live show, at least in this lifetime, anyway I was just thinking of starting to play in playback, if Madonna can do it we definitely can do it too. Metal-heads usually aren't so smart or are just too drunk to understand what's going on.

PW: Well that is about all I have to ask apart from, have you any ideas for the future of Aborym or is it too early for you to have formulated plans yet?

Fabban: Next year is the twentieth year of activity of this band. We have all the intentions of celebrating in some ways this important event. I can assure that you won’t wait four years more to listen to more Aborym music.

Anything you want to add?

Faust: Thanks for the interview, support your local scene. Never ever give in. Cheers.

For more on the band check out http://www.myspace.com/aborym666

Interviewed by Pete Woods

Translated by Bianca Soellner
Biancamaria.soellner@gmail.com

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