Metal heavy hitters Impending Doom and Rivers of Nihil headline 2022 Aura Fest

After a few years off, the main Aura Fest is roaring into the Ships of the Sea Museum with one of its strongest line-ups yet. Along with the highly anticipated return of deathcore rising stars Lorna Shore (led by the inhuman pig squeals and guttural growls of new vocalist Will Ramos), Aura Fest is headlined by metal fan favorites Impending Doom and Rivers of Nihil.

For some, the idea of Christian metal conjures cringe-inducing memories of Pat Boone wearing a leather-daddy vest and spiked dog collar, but Christian deathcore legends Impending Doom prove that positive religious messages can be delivered through the most ear-bleeding, brutally extreme music.

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Impending Doom brings Christian metal to metal fans (and some Christians)

Founded in Riverside, Calif., in 2005, Impending Doom have been preaching the good word over blast beats and death growls in a style they call “gorship,” a port manteau of “gore” and “worship.” Vocalist Brook Reeves also cleverly came up with a vaguely occult symbol called a “repentagram” that has nine points representing the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.

For diehard extreme music fans, this all might be hard to swallow if Impending Doom weren’t able to win over audiences with their incredibly savage and technical music. After over 15 years, Impending Doom have slowed down their touring schedule, so Savannah metalheads should be excited to get a rare appearance from the band.

“We’ve slowed down in recent years,” admitted Impending Doom bassist David Sittig. “We mainly just do fly-out shows and festivals. Kind of like what we’re doing this weekend for Aura Fest is flying out on a Friday, performing on Saturday, and flying back home on Sunday. We try to do that once or twice a month throughout the year. Nothing too crazy.”

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That doesn’t mean that the band have softened their performances or recorded output. Their latest EP, “Hellbent,” remains as heavy as their previous six albums.

“When it comes to writing the music, the dynamic of everyone in the band, nothing has ever really changed,” said Sittig. “The only thing that has changed is everyone got older, everyone has gotten married, started having kids, and doesn’t really want to leave home. That’s the only thing that’s changed, but the drive to make super heavy music and try to write better material each time around, that’s as strong as it’s ever been.”

Christian metal can seem like an oxymoron. With rare exceptions, metal has always been associated with the devil. Even Impending Doom’s album covers feature blood-soaked hellscapes and demonic figures common on more satanic metal album covers. Some Christian listeners might object to Impending Doom’s aggressive sound, but metal fans immediately get it.

“It’s usually only from Christian listeners that either don’t agree that it’s Christian because of how it sounds, but not often,” Sittig said about listeners misunderstanding them.

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“It’s never been anyone that we even met in person. It’s usually just people that get loud online or send a message. We’re used to it. We’ve been hearing that for fifteen years, and they never have any good points to make about it. It’s just the way it sounds. That’s why we started this band because we liked really heavy music and there weren’t any bands with the message around, so we wanted to start it.”

It’s easy for Impending Doom to appeal to a broad base of fans both Christian and non-Christian, because unlike much other Christian rock, they don’t sound completely square.

“I agree,” said Sittig. “We don’t really listen to too much Christian music, not because we don’t want to, but a lot of it out there is cheesy, especially the rock stuff. We’d like to like other Christian artists, but there’s not a lot of options that aren’t super cheesy. There are a bunch we do love and listen to like August Runs Red and Demon Hunter, and there’s a whole bunch of other ones. But at least when we started out there was not many options out there that wasn’t super cheesy.”

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Sittig added, “In the many years of us touring non-stop, it’s always been very positive and interactions with all types of fans across the world, Christian, or secular, or whatever, it’s always brought a sense of community and everyone has always been a tight-knit family with our fans and everything. It’s definitely very positive.”

Rivers of Nihil is back with 'The Work'

Rivers of Nihil garnered universal praise from critics and fans for their 2018 album “Where Owls Know My Name,” an epic that built upon their technical death metal with the addition of progressive elements, dynamic atmospherics, and even noirish saxophone.

The response to their masterpiece could have created an unwieldy amount of pressure on Rivers of Nihil, but instead the band took it as a carte blanche to expand upon their adventurous sound with their latest opus “The Work.”

“That was more the attitude we took,” said Rivers of Nihil bassist and vocalist Adam Biggs. “We took some big artistic risks on ‘Owls’ and it really did us a lot of favors. Why not take more artistic risks? Why not try to push the boundaries a little more and maybe that’s what people are here for? I’m sure at this point if we put out another ‘Where Owls Know My Name’ kind of record we’d make a lot of people happy, but there would be some other people disappointed that we didn’t do anything different. I think it’s more artistically honest to try to spread your wings every time a little more.”

Biggs is not too worried about dividing River of Nihil’s fanbase between those who prefer a constant barrage of heaviness, and those who prefer a variety of genres and sound textures.

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“I think there’s some split, but there is never not going to be a split,” said Biggs. “You see it with every band as they go. Even the most diehard people will just abandon you because they get tired of what you’re doing. I’d rather people get turned off from us because we’re doing something daring rather than just treading water. There are a lot of bands that find their sound, something that people latch on to, and they just keep doing that until they fade away. I’d rather avoid stagnation and have people be like, ‘I don’t like what they're doing now,’ but, I still like it.”

“The Works” is the final part of a series of a four album season cycle. Guitarist Brody Uttley incorporated field recordings of their hometown Reading, Penn., including train sounds heard everyday outside his house. The effect is an atmosphere that conjures visions of their home.

“He’s very wrapped up in the audio of everything,” Biggs said of Uttely’s contributions. “That’s his artistic expression, the nuts and bolts of, ‘How do I make these cool sounds happen?’ My end of it is more of, ‘How do I paint an emotion on top of that with the lyrics and themes?’ It was very cinematic seeming. The way we write, he’ll write these demos for songs and they all have these film score qualities to them. I felt like structuring the record as a film score or movie soundtrack felt like the most honest thing to do. Or the most fun thing to do, as well. In that way it sort of tells a story.”

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With elements in Rivers of Nihil’s recorded works like jazzy saxophone solos, quiet ambient music, and introspective piano interludes mixed with crushing progressive death metal, it could be difficult for lesser bands to recreate the music in a live setting.

“I think when we’re writing it we’re always kind of thinking about, ‘We will have to play this out eventually,’” said Biggs. “Especially on the newest record, there are a lot of sections that are really kind of bare and barebones, and those parts can be really delicate live, whereas if you’re playing just all out fast death metal, that’s a pretty easy win for us at this point. We know a blast beat or a breakdown is going to translate really well. But as we go along and make this thing a little more dynamic and progressive, some of the more gentle parts of the set are often, not hard to handle, but a different nuance to perform as a band where before a lot of our career was heavy stuff.

“It all seems like it’s going very well. People seem to be here for the total experience of the thing. We’ve been writing music that is very dynamic so people who show up to these shows, I think they’re expecting all of that at this point. If you’re not really on board for that kind of stuff, there’s still plenty of heavy stuff happening, as well.”

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Impending Doom, Rivers of Nihil headline 2022 Aura Fest in Savannah GA