This band is cautiously optimistic about what sort of opportunities a huge battle of the bands festival can produce for a small band. But that caution is not getting in they way of them putting on an incredible show. The number one thing that they search for in their live performances is a great connection with their audience. They did it once at the first round of the competition, and they’ll surely do it again for the semi-finals at The Factory Theatre, so don’t miss out on October 20th. Before the show, they share their excitement with Emergenza.

FOR THOSE WHO DIDN’T GET TO SEE YOU IN THE FIRST ROUND, CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT WHO AUROX ARE?
To be completely honest, it’s very hard to come up with a complete definition of who Aurox are because as a band we are still progressing and evolving who we are and what we stand for as a group. But in the physical sense we are just five guys from Sydney with different backgrounds and different cultures who really just have an insane passion for music. We each have individual influences and idols that we look up to musically and what we try to do is incorporate as many of those styles into our unique sound. If we break it down to its rawest form and we really needed to classify who Aurox are, you could probably say that we are a progressive hard rock metal band.

WHAT’S A LIVE AUROX SHOW LIKE?
A live Aurox show is ridiculous, hahaha! Seriously though, we try to interact with the crowd as much as we possibly can to draw them in but at the same time nothing is too serious because we feel that there is a need to relate to the audience. Personally, especially with regards to the kind of music that we play and the lyrics we’ve written, we try to appeal to basic emotions like anger, hope, corruption in society and the will to fight. Mostly because at the end of the day we want the audience to translate their own journey from our music and if they see that we are just normal people like them, then they feel more inclined to believe our music as much as we do.

WHAT WAS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE FIRST ROUND FOR YOU?
We’ve all spoken about this, and the fact that we’ve managed to get it on tape means that we can relive it as much as we want because to us it was the epitome of what we all seek to achieve in relating to the audience. During the heavy breakdown of our first single and one of our favourite songs “The Road” (and a lot of our fans agree it’s their favourite too) we had managed to stir the crowd up into a good amount of emotional energy, and when we called for everyone to jump and had everyone in the moshpit, jumping in unison. It was a very defining moment because it felt like we had done what we had originally set out to do with our music, which was to make people feel as passionately as we do with the direction we take in controlling our own destinies.

CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE IN THE FIRST ROUND AND WHAT YOU LEARNED FROM IT?
We all definitely have a sense of the kind of pressure we’d face professionally in a competition as large in scale as this. Especially in terms of preparation and advertising for these sorts of events you can never be too ready, but having gone through the experience from the first round we all took a sense of achievement from how well we can adapt to unforeseen circumstances. We’ve learnt that there’s a lot more involved in putting on a good show that goes on behind the scenes and it definitely helps to keep our egos in check because some of us need that sometimes.

SO HOW DOES IT FEEL BEING ONE STEP CLOSER TO THE EMERGENZA FINALS?
It’s really exciting, but it’s the kind of nervous excitement that you get when you’re about to experience something amazing for the first time. Sort of like how girls look forward to their first kiss, or guys are constantly pushing to be 18 so they can have their first legal drink, hahaha. It’s also somewhat tense because you know that despite the fact that there’s no malice you’re competing against other bands to win the right to represent Australia at Emergenza in Europe and you want so desperately to be that band because it just opens up so many opportunities for us. So it can be kind of hard to keep doubts out of your head about the music that you’re playing, but at the same time you don’t want to be that band who’s so stuck up about how good they are as musicians that you’re just too cocky and it brings you crashing down. I think we’re all trying to approach this with as much of a level head as possible and let everything unfold while hoping for the best.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO BETWEEN GIGS AND WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO PREPARE FOR THE NEXT PHASE OF THE COMPETITION?
Honestly, we’ve all been dealing with our own personal issues at the moment in between comps, trying to squeeze in as much time as we possibly can in the recording studio as well to get our EP out. So in retrospect we probably haven’t been doing as much as we should’ve been to prepare, but the interesting thing about the way we as a band work cohesively is that we work really well under the pump like procrastinating students, hahaha. We’re typical musicians, we leave everything to the last minute and that inherently means that we get on each other’s case and we get really pissed at each other sometimes because it feels like things aren’t working out the way they should be but then somehow, out of nowhere, we always manage to just pull it together. Hopefully at this point though now we have got a better idea of what we’re doing as a band we’ll start to make more time in between personal issues that we may each have to get everything running smoothly and put on a good show.

HOW ARE YOU PLANNING TO PROMOTE FOR YOUR UPCOMING GIG?
Nothing is more powerful then word of mouth. Like I said before we’ve been trying to squeeze in as much time as we possibly can in the recording studio. At the moment we have a physical copy of our single to give out, we’re going to spread it like a disease, haha. We’ve already got a solid fan base and they’ve always said that our live shows are good but because we have nothing to give them so they can show other people how good they feel we are it’s hard to get other people to take interest in us. So our main point for promotion is to get our single out and then just go crazy with advertising Emergenza and Aurox in any way shape or form we can; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, family, people who owe us money, badgering friends to bring friends who bring friends who bring friends, the works.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE MOST ABOUT THIS ROUND IN THE SEMI-FINALS?
Just being on stage. At the end of the day the basis of why we’re in this competition and why we play live shows is because we love music and we love what we do and we’re so passionate about it that we will take every opportunity that we possibly can to do it. We want to approach this as cautiously optimistically as we can and we’re fully aware of the opportunities it can bring, but like I mentioned earlier, we’re just five guys who love music and our instruments and we want other people to feel what we're feeling. It might be a bit soppy, and there may be ulterior motives to groupies and the want for the rock ‘n roll life style, hahaha, but we’re just really looking forward to being on stage and doing what we all love doing and what were all good at.