Aerial announced themselves to the world with their debut EP ‘Foresight’ in 2016 and though on the surface the record seems simple enough - five tracks of highly impressive metalcore - the journey to this point has been anything but easy. Originally from Norway, the band made the difficult decision to leave their roots behind and after spending time in Hungary and the UK refining their sound, Aerial’s hard graft is starting to pay dividends.
Norway has a rich heritage of heavy music, mainly based around the black movement with the likes of Mayhem in the ‘80s, to other well-known exports Satyricon and Kvelertak today. While Aerial draw on the success of this history, their own sound is more tailored to modern metalcore: “we’ve all been heavily influenced by the bands we’ve been listening to for years, like Architects, Northlane and Parkway Drive. We love the passionate vibe they have, so that was definitely an inspiration. We’ve been trying to breathe life into our genre, while simultaneously sculpting our sound towards the new and refreshing sound of metalcore.”
Despite the success of black-metal bands in Norway, bands within Aerial’s chosen genre have struggled to find longevity. “There is not a single band in our genre that has made it. It’s really hard to make a name for yourself by playing metalcore [here], so that was one of our biggest reasons for leaving Norway to pursue music.”
Before leaving their homeland, the band composed their first single ‘Realizations’, a track that started before Aerial formed between vocalist Markus Johnsen and Budapest-based producer Gabor Toth in December 2014. Once the band was established, the track was embellished and more songs began to take shape. “After a couple of months of writing we had five new songs. We decided to start our journey in Budapest, make some adjustments to the songs and record the EP.” However, for all the effort that went into creating these initial songs, Aerial’s dedication to putting out the best possible music they could create led to a difficult decision: “even though we’d been working with the songs for months we never seemed to feel satisfied with the music and didn’t end up with the sound we had in mind. We had to make the hard call to throw away all our songs and start again to make sure our EP was going to be what we wanted it to be.”
The scrapped EP was never released and in a quest to start anew, Aerial moved their base from Budapest to Birmingham in the UK. “We wanted to go all in for the band for a year and do as much as possible. By traveling to another country it assured us to go all out. We didn´t have a plan what so ever. We just packed our bags and jumped right into it.”
On reflection, the move was a success, being the catalyst that propelled the band to where they are now, but the experience was not without its hardships. “We were living in our car for two weeks before we landed a deal with a landlord. It´s the most horrible apartment we’ve seen in our entire lives, but perfect for us due to the circumstances. We didn´t have hot water, there were holes in the walls, and even on the floor. We had no beds, so we slept on thin mattresses. At times it was so cold in the apartment that you could blow smoke out of your mouth. Our stove and our water tank broke. There was no furniture in the house so we had to go on GumTree to find free stuff. We found some used chairs on the street that we dragged in. We could go on and on, but we had a roof over our heads and instruments.”
The band joke that they’ll most likely post a video about the fateful apartment in the future, the experience being such a pivotal one in the band’s history. Despite the hardships of the living arrangements, Aerial were able to dedicate serious time to their music every day and learned a great deal about the music business in the process. In possession of new material that they were happy with, the band reached out to Keaten Goldwire (guitarist of Invent, Animate) to get his feedback on the songs. “[We had] Skype calls with him and kept sending material back and forth having him give his thoughts and opinions into the writing process. He really liked what we were about.” He was so impressed that he agreed to produce the band’s EP, along with Goldwire’s friend Jesse Cash, guitarist of Erra and vocalist of Ghost Atlas. The hard work paid off, resulting in ‘Foresight’, the band’s fantastic debut EP.
It’s been an exhausting process for Aerial to get to this point but the band have no intention of slowing down. “We’re currently at the start phase of writing new material, bouncing out new ideas, so we’re kinda stoked to get the ball rolling. It´s definitely going to be in the same style, but we´ll be making some adjustments now that we feel we´ve found our element. We will be experimenting and trying to expand our sound. If you like ‘Foresight’ there’s no chance you’re not going to like what’s coming!”
The band have also not finished globetrotting and have intentions of recording their next record in the US. Due to being an independent band, they can’t say for sure when any new material will surface, but based on Aerial’s history, any delay will certainly not be due to a lack of effort.
‘Foresight’ was released in June 2016 and is available to purchase here and Aerial merchandise can be purchased at their official store.