INTERVIEW: Jamie Hails – Polaris

Metalcore may not have the same commercial and cultural success as it did in its heyday, but the very fact that the genre is alive and kicking in 2019 is testament to its longevity. Genre staples like KILLSWITCH ENGAGE or UNEARTH are still going strong and the underground revival on the heavier end of the spectrum is showing that metalcore still has plenty of gas left in the tank. For emerging talent, this bodes a chance to capitalise on the returning attention and Australia’s POLARIS are one such band. Having capitalised on the attention built from the success of 2016’s The Gult & The Grief EP and 2017’s The Mortal Coil, the band are in pole position as one of metalcore’s bright new sparks and landing a slot in opening for ARCHITECTS on their mammoth European tour proves paramount to their building popularity. Before an impressive outing in Manchester on said tour (read our review here), we spoke with vocalist Jamie Hails to reflect on the band’s breakout success, to discuss the tour itself and how the band are enjoying performing on the biggest stages of their career.

So you are several dates into the tour opening up for ARCHITECTS, how is it going so far?

Jamie: Incredible! Absolutely incredible. This is the biggest run of consecutive shows, these venues are the biggest we’ve ever seen. It’s crazy. The shows have been fantastic, the first handful, we played Stockholm, Copenhagen and Düsseldorf. We’ve played Germany before but we’d never been to the Düsseldorf area, so we’ve never played those three places and the response we got from those shows was ridiculous. It blew us away completely. We played Antwerp and Amsterdam the other night and again, the response was fantastic.

I know it is early in the tour, but have you had a favourite show so far?

Jamie: I’d have to say Düsseldorf, it was like this gigantic hall. Massive, massive crowd and we had an awesome crowd response. Everyone was really getting into it and it was such a fun show. We had a huge wall of death which was fucking awesome!

These shows are the biggest POLARIS have ever played, so is it much of a step-up from say a club run?

Jamie: Oh of course it is. The stages are like the biggest stages we’ve ever been on for one, but yeah, when you are doing your standard sorta club run it’s a lot more engaging, it’s a lot more up close and personal. With this one, you got a barrier that’s five-ish metres away from the stage, so you have to find a different way of engaging the crowd without being face to face and passing the mic to them. I’m always one to get down on the barrier but with all the production that is on stage, we’re not allowed to. But that doesn’t phase me at all, and just for me personally doing the vocals, but for the rest of the guys, it’s just a different way of putting on a show. I guess when you are playing to such a bigger room you’ve got more room to move. It is a lot different though from playing just a standard club run but I don’t know if I prefer playing on bigger stages or in a club, they both have got their positives. With a club show, you are up close and personal with your fans but with this, it’s almost like you are putting on more of a show than just playing your music. But you can feel that connection at the same time in a completely different way.

So with these stages being that much bigger and the venues having that much more of a capacity, have you noticed an upsurge in popularity for POLARIS?

Jamie: Yeah, I guess you could say yeah. In general, this is so much exposure for us, we’re playing to crowds of people that we’ve never played in front of before and, so far, I’ve had people coming up to me, because I go out to merch most nights, and saying “I’ve never heard of you guys before this tour got announced.” Some had checked us out beforehand, others have been like “I haven’t heard you before tonight and straight away I’m a fan of yours. I’m won over tonight, hell yeah.” The shows we’ve played previously obviously haven’t been as big but the responses we’ve had in the two times we’ve been over to Europe we’re fantastic, but this, I want to say it’s the same but on a way bigger scale. There’s a lot more people knowing what we are about and a lot more people getting into it. I don’t want to say it’s scary, but it’s weird. We’re literally on the other side of the world playing to people, like I said, that we’ve never played to before and even in countries that don’t speak English as their main language, people are singing back our lyrics and getting into our songs! It is like what the fuck! It’s such an overwhelming feeling.

Your album The Mortal Coil is two years old this year, how have you found the reception? Did you achieve everything you wanted to achieve with that record?

Jamie: Way more than we ever thought we would! We’re here on the other side of the world with ARCHITECTS and BEARTOOTH playing on these stages. We’re only playing album songs on this tour, no older material, and every night there are people singing along and people are knowing our lyrics which is from the album. It’s amazing to see how far our album has gotten and how well it has been received worldwide. Honestly, I never thought we’d be overseas touring, let alone being here doing this with ARCHITECTS and playing to these crowds.

So have you started thinking about the next album?

Jamie: Yes. We’re currently writing at the moment. We have a writing rig out here with us and we’re trying to knock out some writing on these shows, like you know backstage in the green rooms and stuff, because if we didn’t, this is like six weeks of time that we aren’t using to be writing. The goal is to have an album out later on this year, or at least new music out this year. So as I said we are writing on the road, working on new material and yeah, the goal is get something hopefully written, recorded and released this year.

So with all of the experience you’ve had since The Mortal Coil was released, how much of that experience is bleeding into the writing process for this new album?

Jamie: You do notice that certain moments of songs go better live than other moments but just going back to what I said about how well the album was received. Obviously, the stronger songs and the weaker songs, if you want to call it that, we do take that into consideration but at the end of the day, we really just write music that we want to hear. That’s probably the best way I can say it, we don’t think we’re doing anything re inventive, we’re not doing anything that has never been done before. If anything, we’re just playing metalcore that has been done and dusted, but for some reason people really like what we are doing which is awesome! So, we are just writing songs and parts that we think sound fucking dope. People seem to like that so we’ve taken that on board for moving forward on the next record and especially because of how well our album has been received, there’s a lot more pressure to not so much follow it up, but to meet that expectation and do better.

That was going to be my next point! Is there a lot of pressure for this new album?

Jamie: Yeah. Even before The Mortal Coil, we had our EP The Guilt & The Grief which did way more than we thought it would. So, in the lead-up to the album, writing those songs for The Mortal Coil, there was pressure there. It was like “shit, our EP went a lot bigger than we thought it would, so we need to make sure this album is banging” and now that we’ve done the album and that has gone bigger than we ever thought, it’s the same again but with another album. We’re like “shit, we can’t just write a 2.0, it has to be better than this!”

I guess it’s good to have the pressure though? As it drives and motivates you?

Jamie: Yeah, even that aside, we’re always pushing ourselves to be better players, better musicians, songwriters and everything but with the pressure there, it’s making us write the best and playing the best we can ever do. It even goes back to what you were saying before, about stepping up our live shows, when you play with bands like this, you really have to step up your playing. This is a fucking professional tour, we can’t go up there being sloppy or being a shitty band otherwise it’s going to damage us. You have to be up there giving 110% every night, which we always have done, whether we’re playing in front of 10 people, 100 people or 10,000 people, we always give it the same show because why shouldn’t we? The ten people, they matter the same as the 10,000 people.

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me Jamie. Best of luck with the rest of the tour!

Jamie: Thank you so much man.

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