Russell HughesPolaris: The Death Of Me (SharpTone Records)
Polaris have got some tough work ahead of them, now and forever more. Because when your debut album is as good as The Mortal Coil everything else will be judged upon it.
But this band have shouted through the crowded metalcore genre where it’s easy to make average music and difficult to create something that really stands out from the crowd. Bury Tomorrow have the knack, While She Sleeps have cracked it and Of Mice & Men have built a career out of it. Polaris are about to join that top tier of bands.
The Remedy was 2017’s stand out heavy song and with Hypermania the Sydney band may have delivered 2020’s.
Landmine has breakdowns, guitar solos, big shouty choruses and a dirty deathcore breakdown that is transitioned to seamlessly, brilliantly, beautifully. Polaris are fantastic live and you can see this one testing structural engineering to the limit.
Thankfully, this isn’t a one off. The whole of The Death Of Me is peppered with individual moments of brilliance – that solo on Vagabond, the lyrics on Creatures of Habit,
This band have always been about delivering breakdowns that make the earth shake. The Mortal Coil was peppered with them and it’s part of what makes Polaris so listenable – and that’s what album two has been built around.
Polaris were careful to tread the line between staying true to what they had made before and breaking new ground and exploring their creativity – and if that’s a metric they’d like to be judged on Polaris have succeeded. And then some.
Those massive breakdowns, the lyrical honestly, the slow builds and the extra freedom they’ve given each other to show off their individual quality are all there in droves.
The Death Of Me is another chapter in his band’s impressive rise to the top and it sounds like they’re in for a hell of a ride.