(Atom Splitter) Sydney melodic metalcore outfit Polaris return today armed with a ferocious new single and video "Nightmare," which is taken from the group's impending new album Fatalism, due out on September 1 via Resist Records in Australia and SharpTone Records for the rest of the world. Pre-order it here.
Featuring an equally ominous music video capturing the track's dystopian themes, "Nightmare" also pays tribute to the recent devastating loss in the Polaris family.
As drummer and lyricist Daniel Furnari explains, "We created this video with our friend Ben Wrigley, AKA Third Eye Visuals, who found some amazing locations and imagery to help us convey the track when paired with his brilliant editing skills. This was the second of three music videos we filmed with [late guitarist] Ryan [Siew] earlier this year. It has been a challenging and very emotional task to complete these videos in light of what has happened, but after careful discussion with his family, we collectively felt that we wanted to share with the world the final things that Ryan created with us. We will proudly cherish the memories of him contained in this footage, and hope you will too."
Following the release of Fatalism's first single, "Inhumane," the origins of "Nightmare" trace back to the album's infancy, penned in 2022 during a week-long writing session in the Blue Mountains.
"'Nightmare' is a reflection on the constant state of fear that the world at large seems to have lived in for much of the past couple of years - the feeling of waking up every day into a dystopia of uncertainty and anxiety where nothing really feels safe anymore," shares Furnari. "The more I thought about it, the more I arrived at the conclusion that maybe this fear was the biggest thing we all had in common during a time of such great division - that our collective dread was our greatest unifier. That concept then really helped to shape the thematic direction of the rest of the record.
He continues, "This was the second song that was written for the album and it started with that chorus melody, chords and lyrics, which I brought to the guys to build a song around. We fleshed it out on our first writing trip to the mountains and it developed into a very riff-heavy song, with the guitar being passed back and forth a lot between Rick and Ryan and all of us weighing in, so I think we all had an early attachment to it for that reason."
Fear: humanity's great divider, but also its most potent unifier. It's this very notion that lies at the beating core of Polaris's third album Fatalism; a record shaped by the sense of despair and dystopia that engulfed the world over the past few years, and the overwhelming accompanying sensation that we were powerless to change course.
Polaris have already firmly established their place as a fixture in the Australian heavy landscape via their first two albums, the ARIA-nominated The Death Of Me and 2017's The Mortal Coil, which debuted in the Australian Top 10. They have been awarded a laundry list of accolades, album of the year mentions in end of year lists, sold-out countless headline tours of Australia, and have toured across the globe. Not to mention performing at Download Festival, Unify Gathering in Australia, headlining Knight & Day Festival, and most recently performing the 2022 Good Things Festival headlined by Bring Me The Horizon.
FATALISM TRACK LISTING:
"Harbinger"
"Nightmare"
"Parasites"
"Overflow"
"With Regards"
"Inhumane"
"The Crossfire"
"Dissipate"
"Aftertouch"
"Fault Line"
"All In Vein"
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