Ελληνικά
Aura Noir need no special introduction to fans of extreme metal. Hailing from Oslo, Norway, and active since the early 1990s, they created a sound that became almost synonymous with the term black thrash: raw energy, poisonous riffs, influences from the first wave of black metal, and the aggression of classic ’80s thrash. Aggressor and Apollyon formed Aura Noir with the intention of returning to the raw power and authenticity of an era when metal had nothing to prove to anyone. With the addition of Blasphemer, also known for his work with Mayhem, the band shaped a distinctive sound that was captured on releases such as Black Thrash Attack (1996), Deep Tracts of Hell (1998), The Merciless (2004), Hades Rise (2008), Out to Die (2012), and Aura Noire (2018). Despite never following trends or taking the easy path, Aura Noir managed to earn a unique place in the history of extreme metal. Their music looks back to the roots of the genre while remaining alive, dangerous, and unpredictable. Their appearance at the Running Free Festival offers the audience the opportunity to experience a band that has preserved the true spirit of the underground: without compromises, without unnecessary decoration; only riffs, intensity, and the authentic spirit of metal.
Running Free Festival is a festival that places great importance on authenticity and the history of underground metal. What does it mean for Aura Noir to participate in an event that celebrates this mentality?
We play all kinds of festivals but usually it means that the majority of the people understand what we are doing — which is great. And usually the hospitality and atmosphere is much better. The downside is that we are high up on the bill and play late so we cannot really enjoy walking around watching bands and drinking beers because we have to be in decent shape for our performance.
When you formed Aura Noir in the early ’90s, what was the need or motivation that pushed you to create a band that looked more toward the roots of metal rather than the trends of the era?
When we started it was very much the typical atmospheric focus — in the Norwegian scene at least. Most would have some Bathory elements and Celtic Frost/Hellhammer, and some had a more symphonic/classical approach. But we all had this early intense and evil sounding thrash metal in our veins and even if nobody played that style anymore — all the “veterans” of the scene worshipped it. You can hear elements of Destruction type of riffs in Darkthrone from Under a Funeral Moon on… but it’s more concealed. We kind of went more all the way. So what happened was that most of the musicians in the scene were super excited about our music but the newcomers and fans didn’t really get the lack of corpse paint and pictures of us drinking beer on the graveyard.. and the more thrashy music. They were taught by the “black metal elite” that Thrash metal sucked (and it had in fact sucked since 1986 with very few exceptions). So we were maybe a bit too early. Should probably have started 10 years later or ten years earlier.
The term “black thrash” is now used everywhere, but when you started, it was not yet a clearly defined category. How do you see the fact that many people today consider Aura Noir one of the bands that shaped this sound?
We called our music Black Thrash to avoid confusion with the typical technical, “perfectly” recorded, soulless thrash metal with lyrics about society that basically all bands started doing after 86. We were aiming to sound chaotic, intense and evil like Early Sodom, Kreator, Slayer, Dark Angel. I think it’s a good thing we invented it because there is a huge difference in music/production/attitude between say Deathhammer and Municipal Waste.
Your influences from bands such as Venom, Celtic Frost, Sodom, Kreator, and others are obvious, yet you never sounded like a simple revival of the past. How did you manage to transform these influences into something uniquely your own?
We had a mission in the beginning to get people to understand how old thrash metal could be as vicious as black metal, so some of those riffs are obvious homages. That aside — we obviously had the Norwegian Black metal influence as well and some early Death metal… like Autopsy. And we wanted to sound like ourselves obviously. I’d ideally like a band that could have co-existed with those other bands in 1985 that all had their own identity.
Black Thrash Attack has become one of the most recognizable albums of the genre. When you were creating it, did you feel that you were building something that would have such a long-lasting impact?
I guess we were pretty satisfied but I don’t know. I only made half the songs and I am happy I had Aggressor on drums and Blasphemer playing guitars with me. And Aggressor’s songs have always been an honor to play. But our mission to revive that first era thrash metal feeling, I don’t know how well we succeeded. I mean the same thing has happened now with those bands in shorts who are reviving the kind of thrash metal that was killed by grunge… well deserved. I might sound bitter but it’s a bit tragic with the human race how when one thing achieves a little popularity — then some business person will pick up on it and see the possibility to make it more mainstream and make more money. And people are easily fooled. So I don’t know how big an impact we had. We are not big enough for that. If you see rankings of Thrash metal releases through the years we are mostly not even mentioned. Then again we are perhaps not thrash metal enough… not black metal enough and will fall in between those categories.
There is a unique rawness present in your early releases. Do you believe that imperfection, dirtiness, and immediacy are elements missing from much of modern metal production?
Yes definitely. If you compare it to food it’s like if you have a favorite local Hamburger restaurant where everything is home made from scratch. It can still be made by amazing chefs but it won’t taste and look exactly the same every time. But then some chain buys them up and says…hey we can industrialize this shit and have everything premade and perfected with exact cooking times and grams of salt/pepper and onions so it will taste exactly the same every time and be much cheaper and we will make loads of more money. And people who are not especially into food will be happy because their hamburgers got cheaper and safe and not spicy so their kids and grandmothers can all go to enjoy. But in the end it’s fucking boring you know. And when you are aware of those premade drum sounds, click track recordings, re-amped guitars and all the tricks to make a band sound “perfect”, you can’t stand listening to it for even two seconds. And I have no problems with bands who are great musicians. But compare it to an orchestra. They are typically all great musicians. And why do they have the conductor there?? To create feeling! Make them slow down/speed up when it’s needed. To make them play more intense or more “piano”. If they had a click track in their ears instead of the conductor… how lame would that be. In modern metal the tempo is not created by the musicians and the drums are triggered so they sound exactly the same throughout the album/show. You cannot tell if the drummer is excited and hits extra hard for instance during certain parts of the song… because the sound is the same whether he hits as hard as he can on the snare drum or he lets his 5 year old son hit it. This is the kind of “perfection” I hate in metal and I have absolutely no idea how it ended up in our genre but there’s an overweight of bands that do it that way. And most sound engineers seem to think that this is the metal sound. So you have to specify that “NO our kick drums are not supposed to sound like popcorn popping superloud. It should sound like a proper fucking drumkit from the 70s.” I could go on for hours about this but it’s a lost case.. and I get too agitated. Need to chill now.
Many bands constantly try to evolve and reinvent themselves. Aura Noir, on the other hand, seem to protect a specific identity and philosophy. Is it difficult to remain true to yourselves after so many years?
No. We don’t sound the same as we did 30 years ago either. But I guess we have other bands to let out whatever crazy musical ideas we have. What we have done lately though is create small rules for ourselves prior to making an album. Like the previous album we only allowed ourselves to use 1 guitar track throughout the recording. So whenever there’s a solo you can only hear the bass in the background. And on the upcoming album the plan is to be so well rehearsed so that we can record everything except for the vocals live in studio. And we also want all the lyrics and vocal arrangements to be finished before we enter studio. That hasn’t really happened before and will probably make it sound different than everything we have done up until now yet it will be totally recognizably us!
Deep Tracts of Hell revealed an even darker and more aggressive side of the band. How do you remember that creative period?
Well we recorded 5 songs first I believe in the same studio as the two first and were thinking about it becoming an EP. Don’t remember exactly what happened but we ended up not using it.. and instead we made a couple of more songs and went to record with Knut/Garm from Arcturus/Ulver. Blasphemer was on tour with Mayhem at this point so me and Aggressor did everything ourselves. We had one guest, Sverre, playing second rhythm guitar on “Released Damnation”. He is now our soundguy. Long time friend. But yeah. A bit more black metal feeling to that recording. It ended up sounding quite distorted. Vocals has this PJ Harvey effect on them that is maybe a bit too much but it is what it is. They also forgot to record one of the kick drums on one of the songs I remember. Far from perfect. Oh and Knut from Arcturus also plays lead guitar on Blood Unity. I was working at Kodak at the time so a colleague of mine went with us to this old sawmill in the forest and took all the pictures to the album cover. And we deliberately developed them wrong so they ended up green. I like that shit. We had swapped record labels at this stage as Malicious records failed to pay us (same thing happened with Hammerheart who released Deep Tracts of Hell) and we went on our first tour in Europe with label mates Aeternus and Nocturnal Breed. Good memories actually.
The Merciless holds a special place in your history, featuring contributions from musicians such as Fenriz and Nattefrost. How did the Norwegian underground scene influence the journey of Aura Noir?
Well Nattefrost had moved to Oslo and lived a 3 minute walk from me at this time. We were together all the time in a creative yet toxic way. Think he was doing his first solo shit back then which I still hold as fucking awesome shit. I was also very into Carpathian Forest before I knew him and he was into Aura Noir.. so that was cute. And don’t forget Dirge Rep from Gehenna wrote the lyrics to that “Funeral Thrash” song. We recorded the album at our current soundguy’s place and he also does backing vocals on “Black Metal Jaw”. Very good/creative period for us. We had a great place in central Oslo where we could play 24 hours a day and get up on the roof and drink/smoke.. see the whole city/fiord. Even the bands in the rooms next to us were inspiring. It’s always annoying when you have breaks and the band next door is fucking crap. But this was like Madrugada and Turbonegro or whatever so I don’t know. I think we have never been that inspired while we were based in Oslo. And especially the vocals on the album is probably the best I have done. I had 100% control of them. Did 4 takes. One sober, one drunk, one hung over and one stoned.. and just picked the best. We also recorded 3 songs that would later appear on the next album Hades Rise in that same period.
The Norwegian metal scene of the ’90s gained enormous worldwide influence. How do you view that era today, and what do you think made that generation of musicians so unique?
In the very beginning I think Norwegians did a very atypical Norwegian thing by saying “we are the best — we are true.. everyone else can fuck off”. And even if most of the bands here were inferior to all the American/Swedish death metal bands musically.. they all sounded polished and the same whereas the Norwegian scene brought an evil and haunting atmosphere and appeared extremely much more serious.
You have experienced very difficult moments throughout your career, which changed many things for the band. How did that experience affect the way you view music and live performances today?
Yeah you’re thinking about the incident after The Merciless when Aggressor was in a coma for a month and couldn’t play drums any longer. It made me a better drummer for one. I had to step up my game to not make people bitch so much about him not playing so awesomely on the albums. And me and Aggressor also adapted the songwriting a bit to my favour, so the songs on Hades Rise are more mid tempo. I also used a minimalistic drum kit for that one. 4 drums only. And I had moved to the mountains to get away from people and the rather unhealthy lifestyle of the city. And had bought the studio equipment from Sverre.. so it’s basically the same mixer and microphones we used on The Merciless.. even if it doesn’t sound like it. We used the same stuff on Out to Die and Aura Noire too btw.. but different people have been mixing.
Despite all the changes and difficulties, Aura Noir continued. What is it that still keeps you creative after so many decades?
Personally it’s because we get along musically and personally. I adore playing and hanging with Aggressor, Blasphemer and Tank.
Aura Noire (2018) was an album that showed the band could remain recognizable without simply repeating itself. How do you approach the creation of new music today?
We just make shit and we are critical with the riffs. We have always been all about the riffs. This time Tank will do the drumming and he is also more involved with the songwriting. Last time we counted we have 9 songs ready. But we will meet one last time in a remote studio here where the atmosphere is killer and make 2-3 more songs.. and then one more session to record all of them and pick the best ones to go on the next album. Tank is a much better/faster drummer than I am.. so it will sound different and like I already said we will try to record it live as well. I am excited.
What do you consider to be the biggest mistake a band can make when trying to preserve its legacy?
Απ.: Maybe by playing it too safe and aiming for perfection. But what do I know. People in general love the mundane/soulless shit.
Today there is a new generation of musicians rediscovering black thrash. What do you think younger listeners find in this sound?
They should ideally find honest, inspired, intense and unique sounding music. The underground scene operates very differently today because of the internet and streaming.
If you were starting Aura Noir in 2026 instead of 1993, do you think it would be easier or more difficult?
Difficult question. If you mean that we would have been more successful as in record sales and all that. Possibly. But our main issue has always been that we are not business-minded. We sign crap deals and people rip us off all the time (apart from Peaceville). But you know.. we are at a pretty ok place right now when we are back on Peaceville and doing cool shows all over. I think our next goal is to step up our live game a bit so we can bring a couple of crew with us so we can focus more on the actual live performance. We are actually a super tight and intense charming(!) live band but it helps a lot to add proper lights and have professionals backing you during soundchecks and all that when you’ve been traveling for hours.
What is the biggest misconception people have about Aura Noir or about the music you play?
It’s mostly from people we have nothing in common with who think that we should have sounded more polished and clean I guess. But you know.. fuck them.. we don’t make music for people who are not willing to work a little bit to enjoy an album. We actually put a lot of effort into not making our songs sound boring. The best selling bands use a lot of copy/paste when they record but we try to make the same parts sound different when we repeat them. Stuff like that.
After all these years, what is it that still makes you step on stage and perform with the same intensity?
We dig our songs and each other. Also we have a back catalogue that is full of gold so we don’t have to play the same setlist all the time and get bored. This year it has been a bit of the same though with the BTA anniversary but many of those songs we haven’t played so much so it’s still ok.
You are preparing to perform at Running Free Festival. What have you prepared especially for this show, and what can people expect from an Aura Noir performance?
This is part of the 30th anniversary for Black Thrash Attack so I guess you can expect a lot of songs from there!
