Aborted was all set to tour with Napalm Death this summer, and then COVID-19 cancelled everything. Aborted vocalist Sven de Caluwé told MetalSucks that the band is going to lose around $60,000 from the cancellation, of which $10,000 is non-refundable visas to the United States.
“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.”
Not exactly $250,000 like Carnifex, but still! de Caluwé later added that Aborted has no plans to launch a GoFundMe to recuperate the losses. Instead, he asks that fans just buy a shirt or something like they would've at a show.
“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.”
