With a name like Aborted, it doesn't take a genius to file the band into the realm of grindcore, but since being formed in 1995 by vocalist Sven de Caluwé (aka Gurgloroth Sven), these Belgians have broken through stylistic limitations to also meddle in straightforward death metal and other metallic forms. So many musicians have moved through Aborted's ranks, however, that quorum enough for a first demo (the highly praised The Necrotorous Chronicles) was only achieved in 1998, after which a pair of uneven, self-exploratory albums (1999's The Purity of Perversion, 2001's Engineering the Dead) were interspersed with various split EPs recorded with other budding artists. Come 2003's Goremageddon: The Saw and the Carnage Done, though, Aborted had grown into the role of key contributors to the death-grind genres and, after issuing the Haematobic EP the following year, delivered what arguably represents their finest hour, 2005's The Archaic Abattoir album. Here, their lineup had stabilized (for the moment anyway) into guitarists Bart Vergaert and Tace de Cloedt, bassist Frederic Vanmassenhove, drummer Gilles Dellecroix, and the ever-present Caluwé. Arriving in 2007, Slaughter & Apparatus: A Methodical Overture saw Caluwé and company inking a deal with Century Media, where they would remain well into the next decade, releasing a string of punishing, blast furnace-forged albums and EPs, including Strychnine.213 (2008), Global Flatline (2012), Necrotic Manifesto (2014), and the Termination Redux EP. Aborted issued the chart-topping Retrogore, their ninth studio album, in 2016. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia