Written by Sosefina Fuamoli
Catching any member of POLARIS during a brief moment of downtime, is a moment you can’t waste – they are becoming few and far between.
Having gone from being a beloved leader within Australia’s heavy scene, to becoming one of the most prolific bands to fly the flag for the genre outside of the country in recent years, the band finds themselves on the precipice of what is going to be yet another mammoth year.
Three years on from the release of their monumental, multi-award nominated record Fatalism, the band has expanded their sphere of influence both at home and abroad; elevating to arena status in Australia, while exploding on festival stages and tours throughout North America, Europe and the UK, both as headliners and supporting the likes of Slipknot and Bring Me The Horizon.
This album cycle also proved to be a period of grieving and growth for the group. Navigating the tragic loss of guitarist Ryan Siew while at the same time, releasing a project that propelled them further onto a global radar, POLARIS had no choice but to embrace pain and evolution in tandem.
Their fearless approach to music and the re-galvanisation of the band as a creative unit has brought POLARIS upon a new horizon in 2026, and it’s one their fans are equally as enticed and excited for.
“The new music we’re working on, like always, I’d like to hope there’s a good amount of diversity to it,” drummer Daniel Furnari says.
“I think I say this with every record, but we’re pushing our sound into some new territory while staying true to ourselves. It might be a boring sentence to hear, four albums in, but we’ve always been a band that evolves at our own rate. It feels natural to us, there hasn’t been some giant genre flip; it’s just been taking what we love and expanding it in every direction we can, while bringing in some new stuff.
There will be some of the least metal moments on there, while also featuring some of our most metal moments you’ve ever heard from us. It reflects our tastes. We like really, really intensely heavy stuff; we like really technical stuff; we like some real meathead, knuckle-dragger stuff. But we still just love anything that conveys a lot of emotion.”
An album like Fatalism was lauded for its blend of intensity and sophistication – a record that demonstrated POLARIS’ maturity, as well as their continued hunt for music that scratched an itch they hadn’t previously focused on. Furnari hopes that with this new album, listeners are able to find some sense of familiarity, but also find something completely new within the DNA of the music.
“I’d like to think that the more our band grows, the more dynamic it gets,” he explains. “You might hear an acoustic guitar somewhere on a record at some point in the future, we haven’t done that before…there are little flavours of other things that we like. I hope people hear that when they listen to it. I hope they hear some of the territories we’ve pushed into.
The core of our fanbase is really receptive and open. There will always be some people who just wish we’d make an entirely heavy record and that’s fine. You can never please everyone, but we want to give as much variety as we can to our fans. Really, the main goal is to please ourselves and remain creatively authentic to ourselves and what excites us. Anyone who likes different aspects of our sound from over the years, will find things in our future work for them within it. They’ll hopefully find some other things that they haven’t heard from us as well.”
POLARIS is already off and running in what is looking to be a huge year. To date, they’ve already headlined their own curated festival in Australia (Life’s A Beach), while supporting Linkin Park on an Australian arena tour.
As Furnari explains, the pressure to deliver on the live and music front never wanes, but neither does the band’s ambition. While these festivals are happening, POLARIS are also in the thick of creating the follow up to Fatalism, while also preparing to tour Australia with Linkin Park.
“It’s a little daunting at times,” he offers a small laugh. “When you’re simultaneously stepping your shows up and working on new music…having the show and production growing at the same time, later in the cycle, has been interesting. We were getting to the tailend of the last record when it was happening, when we were trying to put on a bigger live show globally. It’s challenging, trying to juggle it all.”
“It’s impossible to just focus on one job at a time. It can feel like you’re being stretched thin sometimes, when your attention has to be stretched across so many different things. It can be hard but we’re so lucky that we have more people involved in our team who are really good people, who make sure that it’s not just us having to do everything. There’s a lot of gears in the machine now, and a lot of people to help turn those gears. The rewards will be big.”
Going between studio sessions and production meetings has become the norm for the band; their growth has been reflected in the sheer size of the POLARIS live show in recent years. Their last festival tour of Australia was for KNOTFEST 2025, while their European festival run mere months later proved how much the Sydneysiders have kicked things up.
“Off the back of the festival run in Europe that we did last year, which was absolutely incredible, it’s been nice to see the scale of everything going up,” Furnari says. “We’re a pyrotechnics band now, whenever we can be…once you start doing that, it’s a bit of a drug! It’s a bit of a trap. Suddenly it becomes a big part of your show and then when you don’t have it, you wish you did.”
“We’re so lucky that we’re getting to a place where we’re able to put on a show like that on some of the festivals in Europe, and when we go over to headline - whenever the next run will be - we are hoping to take a larger scale show with more of that special stuff with us.”
POLARIS will return to North America for an April-May run supporting Electric Callboy on the latter’s TANZNEID tour. With appearances at both Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple festivals also scheduled in, the group’s return Stateside is one they cannot wait to sink their teeth into.
“I haven’t seen that many live videos of what they’re doing at the moment, I want to keep it as a surprise for myself,” Furnari admits. “We’ve seen Callboy play a couple of times over the years at festivals and they’ve always been super entertaining, really exciting; such a fun, different band.”
“Watching the way they have grown and cultivated this fanbase across the metal world, it broke a lot of boundaries,” he adds. “I don’t think Australian audiences would have been ready for something like this, many years ago.The power of the internet and social media, and word of mouth, has changed everything. I’m seeing everyone, from diehard metalheads and people I know who, at one time, I never would have expected to cross into that world, absolutely frothing it. I’m also seeing people who don’t listen to metal at all, come into it. It’s really exciting.”
The addition of Sum-41’s Frank Zummo to the German band is also an added point of interest for the POLARIS drummer.
“He was very entertaining to watch [with Sum-41]; a really great performer, with a lot of character to his performance. A very commanding player. It’s very cool to see somebody like that jumping into a new project like this. I remember when that news was announced, I thought it was very cool and unexpected.”
Though an extensive tour of North America isn’t new for POLARIS at this stage, the opportunity to perform to larger audiences who may be coming to the band for the first time, remains an exciting element of embarking on a tour such as this. Especially at this particular time in POLARIS’ creative process, being able to keep the live muscle strong while also allowing new experience and influence to melt into the direction their new album is already heading, can only add to the overall energy they are bringing into this new chapter.
Furnari grins when speaking about some of the rooms the band will play this time around, including LA’s Kia Forum, the iconic Red Rocks in Colorado, and the MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston.
“The opportunity to play to somewhat of a different fanbase, a lot of people who may not have seen us before is exciting,” he says. “Their [Electric Callboy’s] growth has been so inspiring, in so many ways. To see a band find a niche and double down, then double down again, in pursuing their sound; showing everyone that this is what they’re about…it’s working so well. I’m so excited for what their live show is going to be like, I think we have to be prepared for a big couple of weeks out there.”
When POLARIS return home, work on the new album resumes before they then tour Europe with I Prevail across September and October.
As an artist and a fan of heavy music, Furnari is eager to see not only where new POLARIS music takes the band; but where it takes them within the wider heavy scene, one that has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years on a global stage. Speaking to the success of bands like Spiritbox, Bad Omens and Lorna Shore, Furnari is more confident than ever that the hunger for new influences and sonic direction is peaking.
For a band like POLARIS, this couldn’t be a better time to be releasing new music.
“When you look at the bands that are having some of the most growth and attention on them in the last couple of years…a lot of these bands couldn’t be more different from each other, which is what is so exciting,” he explains.
“We don’t just have a whole slew of core bands, or a whole slew of rap-metal bands. Right now, it seems like there are no rules. If you compare Bad Omens, Lorna Shore, Sleep Token, Spiritbox…all these bands are doing such exciting things and none of them sound exactly like each other, that’s what’s so cool about it. To go from Lorna Shore on one end to Bad Omens on the other, then you have everyone else who falls into various places within the spectrum…what an exciting time to be playing heavy music.
It’s broken down barriers. For a band like us, whose goal is to achieve diversity…we don’t feel limited at all by what the current trends are, what people expect from us or by the label of being a “metalcore band”. We never have, but it’s easy to fall into that trap. We’ve certainly had those thoughts, you can get swamped by people’s expectations .All the rules are gone and it’s awesome.”
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POLARIS join Electric Callboy on the North American leg of the Tanzneid World Tour kicking off April 17th. See a list of dates and cities below. Get tickets - HERE
TANZNEID WORLD TOUR WITH ELECTRIC CALLBOY, POLARIS AND SCENE QUEEN
April 17 - South Side Ballroom, Dallas TX [SOLD OUT]
April 19 - Arizona Financial Theater, Phoenix AZ
April 21 - Kia Forum, Los Angeles CA
April 22 - The Masonic, San Francisco CA
April 24 - Paramount Theater, Seattle WA [SOLD OUT]
April 25 - PNE Forum, Vancouver BC
April 28 - The Union Event Center, Salt Lake City UC
April 30 - Red Rocks Amphiteater, Morrison CO
May 2 - The Armory, Minneapolis MN
May 3 - Wintrust Arena, Chicago IL
May 14 - Place Bell, Montreal QC
May 16 - Coca Cola Coliseum, Toronto ON
May 19 - The Pinnacle, Nashville TN
May 20 - Special Events Center, Greensboro NC
May 22 - Yuengling Center, Tampa FL
May 23 - Coca Cola Roxy, Atlanta GA
May 25 - The Theater At MGM, Washington DC [SOLD OUT]
May 26 - Paramount, Brooklyn NY
May 27 - MGM Music Hall At Fenway, Boston MA
POLARIS supporting I PREVAIL in September & October
September 19 - O2 Academy, Leeds UK
September 20 - O2 Academy, Glasgow UK
September 22 - O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester UK
September 25 - Alexandra Palace, London UK
September 26 - O2 Academy, Birmingham UK
September 30 - Ancienne Belgique, Brussels BE
October 1 - 013, Tilburg NL
October 3 - PSD Bank Dome, Dusseldorf DE
October 5 - Porsche-Arena, Stuttgart DE
October 6 - Zenith, Paris FR
October 8 - Halle 622, Zurich CH
October 9 - Alcatraz, Milan IT
October 10 - Wiene Stadthalle, Vienna AT
October 12 - Stodola, Warsaw PL
October 13 - Velodrom, Berlin DE
