Interview by Kris Peters
The inaugural Necrosonic Festival to be held at Brisbane's Mansfield Tavern on August 31 is not your typical metal festival. This is a festival put together by people who have a genuine love of and interest in heavy metal music, not just a promotor out to exploit the scene in favour of a quick buck.
As such, Necrosonic features a number of bands thought to be dead and buried, along with some heavyweights of the scene to celebrate metal the way it should be.
Loud and proud.
With a line-up of 30 bands including Crypt, Psycroptic, Lo!. Astrodeath, Bulletbelt, Mortality and more, HEAVY felt it only appropriate to interview a selection of these bands in the lead-up to Necrosonic, with our first chat with Aaron Tuck from black metal warriors Lumen Ad Mortem.
We mention that it must be an honour of sorts being invited to play at the debut performance of what promises to be a long-running music festival.
"Yeah, definitely," he enthused. "There's a few bands there I haven't heard of before and when I checked them out they blew me away. One of them is Spire, really looking forward to seeing them, and of course Crypt, Psycroptic, Misery… It's an awesome line-up. It will definitely give our necks a workout watching the other bands."
For the benefit of those who might not have seen Lumen Ad Mortem live before, we ask Tuck what to expect.
"We're playing mid-paced black metal," he measured, "with a lot of blast beats. Our music has orchestral sections, and then we've got a projection show we put behind us. Our singer Greg is a tall person who likes to scream in people's faces (laughs). He's got a lot of character. We just get up there and play the tunes as best we can and try to create an atmosphere of dark, gloom and evil."
In the full interview, Aaron talks more about Necrosonic and what he is expecting, the state of metal festivals in Australia, the early days of the band and where they came from, their debut album Upon The Edge Of Darkness, future plans and more.