Meet Native James: A fireball waiting to burn a hole in the UK rock scene

Native James is Aaron James, or AJ, whose upbringing took him from Bedford to Ipswich to north London, then back to Ipswich. Why? Reasons he’s not prepared to divulge, other than to say, “In life you go through trials and tribulations.”

Onstage, AJ becomes Native James, “a whole other entity”, performing his incisive fusion of grime and metal. He admits to going into an almost fugue state during gigs, with little control over his actions and limited memory afterwards. It’s a trait shared by letlive. singer Jason Aalon, who Native supported on the UK leg of their reunion shows in July.

“He’s the best frontman I’ve seen,” AJ says of Jason. “I wanted to understand how he mesmerises a crowd and creates a tidal wave of different emotions, from anger to catharsis, delivered with such conviction.”

AJ is no slouch himself. Having gravitated to the grime made by Ghetts, Dizzee Rascal and P Money in his youth, metal began to permeate his listening via Metallica and Iron Maiden. But it wasn’t until AJ heard Linkin Park’s Crawling that his mind was opened to the possibilities of how the seemingly disparate influences in his life could fit together – music that could be as aggressive as his cadence, accessible but powerful and vulnerable at the same time.

“It’s like two aggressors at a dinner table,” AJ explains of the Native James sound. “They both acknowledge that they are what they are, but they can comfortably sit together because they have the same tendencies. I didn’t want to just get metal beats and spray bars on them, as that would have been a shit sandwich. The two sides had to co-exist.”

It’s illustrated by July single GTFU, on which Native summons multiple vocal styles over menacing guitars. And his forthcoming EP, Confessions Of A Sinner, boasts a feast of similarly punchy offerings.

One is Admiral’s Arms, a reference to AJ’s favourite movie, Queen Of The Damned, in which the vampire Lestat becomes the singer of a nu-metal band (with vocals dubbed by Korn’s Jonathan Davis). In fact, it’s the film’s mention of Glastonbury that got AJ so excited about performing there this summer.

“We played snippets from the film in the set,” AJ reveals with pride. “Did anyone get it? I don’t know! No-one messaged to say they did.”

Maybe not. But it’s not hard to get your fangs into what he’s doing himself.

Confessions Of A Sinner is released on October 3 via Saviour Music. This interview originally appeared in the autumn 2025 issue of the magazine.

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• “It’s walking through the pain as safely as possible with each other”: Inside the complex, chaotic return of letlive.