Singled Out: Polaris' Hypermania

K. Wiggins | 01-23-2020

Sydney rockers Polaris just released a video for their single "Hypermania" from their forthcoming album "The Death Of Me" (Out Feb 21) and to celebrate we asked them to tell us about the track. Here is the story:

Rick Schneider - Guitar: "Hypermania' began the same way many of our songs do - with one core instrumental idea, which was in this case the dissonant, bouncy 'chorus' riff" That was the first thing I came up with and it really dictated the sound of the track. This was the first song I'd properly started working on since The Mortal Coil and stylistically it was a real palate cleanser for me, as it didn't really feel like anything from that album. It was enjoyable to really lean into the dissonance and take influence from the noisier hardcore sensibilities of bands like END, Counterparts and Stray from the Path, while having just enough hints of more traditional metalcore. Before long, I had a good skeleton for most of a song that I brought to the band, just missing a couple of things. Fortunately, [drummer] Daniel [Furnari] came in with the foundational idea for the breakdown buildup - a suitably frantic and off-time rhythmic barrage that made total sense with what we were flowing out of and set me up for that dirty, discordant breakdown. After a bit more fiddling, some weird transitions and an ungodly amount of discussion and revision of the intro riff, we finally landed on the final version of the song."

Daniel Furnari - Drums, lyrics: "This track took me a little bit of time to get my head around when Rick first brought the initial demo to us - although I really liked some of the ideas and the drums were coming together to be wacky, it took a while before I could really see what he was envisioning. What was really cool about it to me though was that the riffs that he was writing had this really strong Southern-hardcore vibe. I was personally hearing a lot of Every Time I Die and Maylene & The Sons Of Disaster, although I don't think that was necessarily deliberate on his part. So I had that on my mind through the process and I was pretty confident that Jamie would be able to channel some of that energy into his vocal delivery. One day in our pre-pro sessions, as [singer] Jamie wasn't there I jumped in the booth and laid down a couple of lines in my (very questionable) best impression of the type of scream I wanted. That happened to be most of the first verse, and the main chorus hook ("I've been up, I've been down every day...") and it felt like a direction, so we got Jamie in there soon after and had a lot of fun experimenting with getting just the right vocal sound for the track, which we later refined in the actual album sessions. Having [guitarist] Jake [Steinhauser] do some screams on a song for the first time was also a really welcome addition and I feel like both of them really nailed this one. This song always felt like it had a lot of tension to it, an edge-of-your-seat feeling like it could fall apart at any moment, and that definitely played into the lyrics and the delivery we went for - a high-anxiety song drawing on heavy mood swings, a fear of spiraling out of control and paranoid delusions about divine judgement. The volatile feel of the song manifests musically at that break in the middle, where the song kind falls apart into this limbo of noise and feedback and then picks back up again, with Jamie yelling "Here we go again" and throwing it back into the chorus. It's funny to think about it now, but that whole idea caused a lot of debate in the studio - but I think it's become one of our favorite things about the song, especially when we play it live!"

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself right here!