Sydney metalcore powerhouse Polaris have announced that their third album Fatalism will be released on September 1st via their long-term home Resist Records. The announcement arrives accompanied by Fatalism's scorching lead single Inhumane.
Reflecting on Inhumane drummer and one of Polaris's main songwriters, Daniel Furnari offers
"Inhumane reflects on the feeling of growing desensitized to death, violence and tragedy due to overexposure. I think for a lot of people over the last few years, when you’re facing a constant barrage of horrible news coming from every corner on a literal daily basis, eventually you reach a point where the initial shock and sadness wear off and you find yourself becoming almost numb to it. It's like a subconscious defense mechanism - when caring too much becomes too taxing, we stop caring at all. That hollow feeling, or lack of feeling, can come with a lot of guilt, making you question whether your empathy and your humanity have been erased, and in a strange way almost wishing you could feel that pang of fear or sadness again."
The band have also issued an Ed Reiss-directed video for Inhumane.
"The music video for Inhumane, conceived by our director Ed Reiss, takes that concept to a fantastical extreme, and features us falling through the floors of a collapsing apartment building, to find that new horrors (literally) await us on each level...It’s one of the wackiest (and bloodiest) ideas we’ve ever put on screen and I’m still kind of in disbelief that it came together!" he adds.
The video for Inhumane ties into the album's greater themes, which the group describe as "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."
Furnari expands on this notion, “For us, fatalism is the resignation to the idea that you have no control over certain things, that some things are almost pre-determined and inevitable, which seems like a negative and almost fearful notion. But one of the reasons I was drawn to it as a concept and as an album title was that there’s almost a freedom in that idea too. Once you can accept that there are certain things you simply can’t control - it’s actually very liberating." “We want people to feel a sense of connection to something outside of themselves when they hear this album. There’s a certain peace that comes with accepting that there are some things larger than yourself and redirecting that fear.”
The writing process for Fatilism wasn’t without its challenges. With COVID forcing the band off the road after a headline tour in support of The Death Of Me, the Sydney quintet responded the only way they knew how: writing more music, albeit remotely on Zoom. it wasn’t until lockdowns eased in 2022 and they relocated to the Blue Mountains for a week of writing that the creative dam finally burst. Shortly after returning from an overseas headlining run in 2022 – Polaris’s first chance to tour The Death Of Me internationally, the recording process began in Melbourne over a period of five months with the band’s live sound engineer Lance Prenc (who also co-produced the album with the band, mixed and mastered Fatalism) and vocal recording duties were handled by Alpha Wolf guitarist, Scottie Simpson.
Fatalism is available for pre-order now.
Polaris - Fatalism
01. Harbinger
02. Nightmare
03. Parasites
04. Overflow
05. With Regards
06. Inhumane
07. The Crossfire
08. Dissipate
09. Aftertouch
10. Fault Line
11. All In Vein
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