Let Metal Reign: Darkest Hour and Zao headline 2024 AURA Fest
AURA Fest, Savannah’s biggest metal music festival is returning with another weekend’s worth of some of the heaviest bands in metal and hardcore.
Popular metal veterans Zao and Darkest Hour are returning to headline the stacked two-day event at Southbound Brewery. Friday, March 1, features Zao at the top of the bill along with a mouthful of amazing bands including The Last Ten Seconds of Life, Through the Eyes of the Dead, With Blood Comes Cleansing, Hazing Over, Psycho-Frame, Bonginator, Balmora, Second Death, Backslide, Common Enemy, and Slingblade.
Saturday, March 2, has Darkest Hour leading the pack along with Orthodox, I AM, Escuela Grind, Capra, Mouth for War, The Holy Ghost Tabernacle Choir, Your Spirit Dies, Somnuri, Manhack, Omenkiller, Gutter, and Corrupted Engine.
Washington, DC’s Darkest Hour arrived in the ‘90s as part of the New Wave of American Metal and were pioneers of modern metalcore, which combined raw punk ferocity with the melodic death metal of Scandinavian bands such as At The Gates, In Flames, and Dark Tranquility. Darkest Hour just released its latest collection of melodic, aughts-era metalcore, full of dexterous guitar solos and hair-raising, shredded vocals. The album release is almost perfectly timed with the band’s triumphant return to AURA Fest, so expect lots of new scorchers to headbang to.
AURA Fest has a familial vibe that seems to have a knack for drawing legendary bands like Darkest Hour back again and again. This is also Zao’s third appearance at AURA Fest, and it’s always a pleasure for them to return.
Band members’ beliefs and sound change over three-decade career
“We just always feel very at home when we go down South anywhere,” said Zao drummer Jeff Grezt. “That was always Zao’s, sort of, home base, in a sense. Even though we’re based out of Pittsburgh and all the guys are from that area, we never really felt like we had hometown shows there. We just always like going down like Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Florida. When we got asked to do AURA Fest, in particluar, it was sort of a no-brainer because it’s always a really relaxed vibe and the crowd is always excited.”
Zao enjoy their AURA Fest experiences so much, they even used live footage from their 2017 AURA Fest performance for the official video for their song “Xenophobe.”