Standing backstage at Cali Vibes with the echo of his first Aurorawave set still ringing through the air, Nathan Aurora is riding a high—one built not just on adrenaline, but on a creative wave that’s been pulling him toward something bigger. Something heavier. Something honest.
“This is the fastest I’ve ever written an album,” Aurora says, almost incredulously, as if the process itself still feels a little supernatural. “And it’s crazy ’cause I kinda can’t even take credit for it. It really just wrote itself.”
Aurorawave—the new project from the longtime reggae and metal multi-hyphenate—isn’t just a genre-bending experiment. It’s a full-on manifestation of a vision Aurora says is the most authentic thing he’s ever done. Rooted in reggae rhythms and drenched in the ferocity of metal, the music doesn’t just push boundaries—it ignores them altogether.
“I grew up playing metal and I played reggae for a long time,” he explains. “So, the freedom to just do both? I love that. I just sit down and let a song write itself.”
That spontaneity—what he calls songs arriving “from the universe and from the ether”—is what fuels the upcoming Aurorawave debut full-length, which is slated for release this August. After a steady stream of singles and the buzz around “Pop Goes Reggae,” Aurora knew the time was right to go deeper.
“It’s maybe not fully for the reggae community because it’s heavy as f***,” he says with a grin. “But it’s very true to where I come from. And in my opinion, there’s a lot of reggae influence on there. None of it’s contrived or thought-out—it’s just me sitting down and letting it flow.”
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For Aurora, the new material isn’t about catering to an audience or chasing a trend—it’s about surrendering to the creative process, wherever it leads.
“I’m not really writing music for anybody, man. Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m writing music for myself. I’m just allowing myself to write music,” he says. “I feel like I’m being guided by something.”
That energy is about to spill out onto stages across the globe. In just a few days, Aurorawave will embark on their first-ever headline tour, a two-week trek that includes Point Break Festival in Virginia. From there, the band heads to Spain for a slot at the legendary Rototom Sunsplash—the world’s largest reggae festival.
And this fall? “We’re going on a big headline album release tour,” Aurora confirms. “And there’s more dates getting announced in the next two days. We’re busy, man. It’s awesome.”
For fans trying to pin down the Aurorawave sound, don’t bother. The point, it seems, isn’t to fit into a box—it’s to blow the lid off it.
“This is the truest vision of me coming to life,” Aurora says, and it’s hard not to believe him.
Because if this record really did write itself, it couldn’t have found a more fitting voice than his.
Interview by Jenna Shaw
Video by Jeff Pliskin @RaisedFistPropaganda
