LIVE REVIEW: Polaris @ SWX, Bristol

POLARIS have been coming to our shores since 2017 and each time they’ve been coming back bigger and better.
This time round its their second show at SWX in Bristol and they bring with them a stacked bill with support from SILENT PLANET, THORNHILL and PALEDUSK. It’s no surprise to anyone that the show was an instant sell out.

Paledusk live @ SWX, Bristol. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

With the venue slowly filling up, a good chunk of people have made it down to catch openers PALEDUSK, hailing from Japan, its only their second time in the UK and coming on a monumental tour like this shows how well liked they are on our shores. Coming on in a hail of spin kicks they set the bar high for the start of the night. Hyping up the crowd with songs like Black Ice, PaleHell and Slay!!. With fists and legs constantly flying in the pit, it has us pondering if the crowd will handle three more bands. Their set was short, sweet and full of energy. The early birds for the night got a wonderful treat for the start of a spectacular evening. Everyone will be going away remembering PALEDUSK.

Rating: 9/10Thornhill live @ SWX, Bristol. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

With a quick change over, THORNHILL are up next. With the bar set high the Aussie quartet take on the challenge. Opening with Views From The Sun, it is has a definitive groove in comparison to PALEDUSK, highlighted by singer Jacob Charlton constantly thrusting his hips in a dance along to the music. The riffs continue through the set in a more melodic nature and we can see the crowd enjoying the change of pace and having a good song along, rather than moshing through the whole set. Jacob still flexes his vocal chords with some impressive low growls that really bring the rumble to their set. Although THORNHILL have to work a bit harder to get the crowd moving with more slower beats in the set, it’s still an impressive performance and provided a little respite before the night moves on.

Rating: 8/10Silent Planet live @ SWX, Bristol. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

Quick changes are the call for tonight because with just enough time to catch a couple breaths, the final support is up. SILENT PLANET blast on to stage with a wonderful metalcore mix. Starting off strong with tracks Offworlder and Collider, it’s an instant energy injection for the whole room. It’s a contrast to the grooves of THORNHILL with even more naughty riffs in songs like Antimatter, the crowd are also in contrast making non-stop pits and any time a circle pit is called, the crowd obeys. There is however, some time given in the set to shout out International Women’s Day, which this gig lands on. It’s great to see the day acknowledged on an all male line up, they shout out some of the women that are in the touring party, with a cheer from the crowd in support. Bringing it it back up for the latter half of the set, the energy is rising still. Ending on Trilogy, a personal song written by Garret Russell during his stay in a psychiatric hospital after he made an attempt on his own life, before the finale he talks about his experience and about living life. A more humbling and heart felt message to end the set on.

Rating: 9/10Polaris live @ SWX, Bristol. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

The crowd cheers as POLARIS finally take the stage. Starting things off slow with Harbinger. It’s a change of pace with singer Jamie Hails walking out solo to start off the track while the rest of the band follow suit a short while in to the track. However, the set quickly gets jumping, with the crowd eager to sing along and be part of the show. Continuing with second single from Fatalism, Nightmare is the time for everyone to flex their vocals cords screaming “we’re living in a nightmare” back at the band.

Not even two songs in and the crowd surfers start cascading over the barrier with Glasgow having almost five hundred over the barrier, will Bristol beat it? Well, they give it a good shot and defiantly keep security on their toes for the whole set. Crowd surfing aside, POLARIS keep the show on top form. Playing a good mix of songs from each of their albums from Lucid to Martyr (Waves). The journey through each album highlights just how good POLARIS are and it’s no surprise at their rise through the ranks of the metalcore elite.Polaris live @ SWX, Bristol. Photo Credit: Serena Hill Photography

They make sure no one is sitting still, opening up bigger and bigger circle pits which take over SWX and leave nowhere for people hide. Taking some time out to speak about being positive, it’s always good when a band uses their platform to bring a good message to their audience. Ending the night on Pray For Rain and break out single The Remedy really brings the show to a close with a bang.

Everyone truly has had the night of their lives, witnessing four superb bands put on one hell of a show. Metalcore is alive and kicking and going from strength to strength. With the show ending before 10pm, the audience will be able to squeeze in a post-gig pint so they can reflect and recover from the show and raise a glass to POLARIS.

Rating: 10/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Bristol from Serena Hill Photography here:

























































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While She Sleeps: Breaking The Mould

WHILE SHE SLEEPS looked poised to be one of the defining names of the 2010s metalcore scene. Formed in Sheffield in 2006, the band were known for their D.I.Y. ethics, playing every show they got the opportunity to play as they recorded their music in a barn that was converted into a music studio.



After resounding success with their 2010 EP The North Stands for Nothing and their 2012 debut album This Is The Six, the band looked to be on their way to stardom. And yet, it never quite worked out for them. Due to a three year gap between their first two albums, the music scene moved on, and WHILE SHE SLEEPS seemed to disappear entirely. At least, that is what it looked like to any casual heavy metal fan.

But WHILE SHE SLEEEPS knew different. They quickly built a loyal fanbase with each album release. This meant that the band could become fully independent in September 2016. They created their own record label called Sleeps Brothers and built their own studio in a warehouse in Sheffield.

But the way we consume music is constantly changing, as streaming services become more popular. Whilst this is great for discovering new music without paying for it, musicians are worse off due to the poor payment they receive from Spotify. As the coronavirus pandemic put the brakes on everything – especially the arts and entertainment industry – WHILE SHE SLEEPS launched a monthly subscription page on Patreon in October 2020 called Sleeps Society, which has changed everything for them.

“It’s allowed us to do so many things in terms of touring, recording, and taking control of every aspect of the band. The Patreon has allowed us to do that without a record label lending us the money. Our fans are our record label. They fund straight towards us to allow us to hire our crew, pay for the recordings and things like that. It’s a special experience for us and the fans to be able to see what we’ve created together,” lead guitarist and producer Sean Long explains.

He and vocalist Lawrence ‘Loz’ Taylor have sat down with us today to discuss their sixth album, Self Hell, which the band – completed by rhythm guitarist Mat Welsh, bassist Aaran McKenzie, and drummer Adam ‘Sav’ Savage – have worked tirelessly at for the past two and a half years. It is both their darkest and their most varied album to date.


The title Self Hell is something that Sean and Loz came up with whilst they were in the studio. As Loz explains. “We’d noticed that this term self help had been thrown around quite a lot, and if you were to write down self help, you’d get self hell first. I think that’s a great metaphor, as you must go through some shit before you realise where you need to be.”

“Before you decide to get help or to change your life in a way that is beneficial, you must first experience the pain of it all,” Sean adds.

The lyrics of WHILE SHE SLEEPS have always been outstanding, but they have also been raw. “As a band, we don’t really follow trends,” Loz explains. “We’re not trying to write what’s hot right now; we’re trying to write good music for the foreseeable future.” The band never sugar-coat the topics they talk about, especially death and grief. In fact, they are one of the very few bands to understand the dichotomy of grief and two songs capture this perfectly: 2010’s Hearts Aside Our Horses, which focuses on the happy memories and the promise to carry on a loved one’s legacy, and 2012’s Our Courage, Our Cancer, which focuses on the pain and confusion of living without a loved one.

Grief and death are also explored on Self Hell with the song To The Flowers, which is one of the stand-out songs due to the emotional lyrics. It starts off with an audio sample from a speech by Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti about how – as Sean explains – “no matter how much outwardly attention, power, and energy you spend trying to fix everything externally, it’s never going to change anything…the change always begins from within.”

The song itself sheds a light on anticipatory grief: the grief that is felt whilst someone is dying. But it can also happen after someone has passed, especially if it is a major loss, as it proves that no one is truly immortal, although we all like to think otherwise. For Loz, the song is about how “no matter who we are, or what we’ve achieved in life, we all go back into feeding the soil, and from our decay, other things will live.”

That positivity hidden in the darkness is a great summary of the album. One example of it is Dopesick, which is a pop-metal song that addresses the dangers of identifying yourself by your mental illness. Another is closing track Radical Hatred / Radical Love, which contains the lyric ‘I will be here for you when no one else is’.

It is musically where the album really shines, crossing from drum and bass, electronica, to pop and nu-metal. It could fall apart if any other band had made it, but not WHILE SHE SLEEPS. Working alongside their longtime producer Carl Brown, the album has a definitive start, middle and end. It sounds like the band have captured their live show and recorded it as an album. It also pushes Loz vocally as he delivers some of the heaviest screams of his career, alongside some singing. But the biggest surprise is when he delves into rapping.

“If I wanted to make a pure rap song, I’d say the words faster. But we tried to make a rap with a sort of punk-rock edge. The band wanted to do something a bit different vocally. We’ve been a metal band for so long, just screaming constantly, so it’s nice to throw some other things in there,” he explains. “We were listening to a bit more rap, including a lot of [rap-rock supergroup] TRANSPLANTS and a lot of NF at the time. It was nice to pick the pace up and try something out.”

Another stand-out song is Leave Me Alone. It opens and closes with the line: ‘We are WHILE SHE SLEEPS’. “I just thought it was badass,” Sean says. “I had playing it live in mind as well, and I thought it was cool introducing yourself. The guitar riff that accompanies it is one of my favourites as it’s very simple. It also sounds like a big ‘fuck you’ to anyone who has doubted our band. I wanted the introduction to shut those people up quickly. It’s us saying ‘This is our band’, and once you hear us introducing ourselves, you get this massive riff. It’s egotistical in a cool way.”

They have a good reason to feel like this. After a phenomenal sold-out show in September 2023 that saw them crowned the new kings of London’s esteemed 10,000 capacity Alexandra Palace, and with a genre-bending album under their belt – alongside a loyal fanbase that will be with them through thick and thin – the only limits that WHILE SHE SLEEPS face are the ones they put on themselves.

Self Hell is out now via self-release.

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