Hail the Sun
Anybody familiar with Hail The Sun will know there's always a great deal of meaning beneath the surface. Theirs are songs the probe the very nature of existence, that strive to find the answers to the fundamental questions that being human raises, and that don't flinch away from any form of self-reflection whatsoever. That's been the case since the band-lead vocalist Donovan Melero, guitarists Shane Gann and Aric Garcia, bassist John Stirrat and drummer Allen Casillas-formed in Chico, CA in 2009, but which is especially the case on cut. turn. fade. back, their seventh full-length. Indeed, even for a band whose album titles veer between being suggestive of something more and existentially profound, this record truly goes the distance, encompassing the complete cycle of life with its four monosyllabic words.
"The album touches on a lot of topics such as military atrocities, humanitarian crises, addiction and love being lost, as well as death," says Garcia. "So many of those things are recurring, and as much as we'd like for things to change and be better and live in a perfect world, it's more that things seem to get better for a little bit and then take a turn-and before we know it, we're right back where we started."
Across its 11 songs, cut. turn. fade. back captures the cyclical nature of all those things, as well as life itself in general. That wasn't the specific intention when the band began writing the record, but when Melero started writing lyrics for and to the music, that's the overarching theme that began to emerge. 2023's previous record, Divine Inner Tension, had seen Hail The Sun intentionally relinquish creative control to the universe, and they continued with that mindset on this one as well, by bending to its whims.
"For the most part," says Melero, "we're always living in that mindset of creating our own realities, doing what we want, and letting the universe do its thing. I would describe this as another cycle of living in general. Trying to write anything to a theme or concept can be incredibly inhibiting for me, so we try to tie shit together after the fact. But it also comes from what I call a higher frequency mindset-an elevated purpose of trying to exist knowing we are the universe."
As connected as we are to the universe, and as much as it exists within us, the band says it's important to note that we're also travelling through it. As such, it was the things that happened to the band along the way-both on a personal level and on a more universal scale-that manifested themselves as topics on this record. And while the themes on this record certainly straddle a great divide, there's one song in particular that carries more weight than most on the personal side of things. In fact, "Relapse Is A Love Affair" is almost as personal as it gets, detailing Melero's inadvertent descent back into addiction. After a bout of kidney stones some two-and-a-half years ago, the singer began taking his medication too much and too often, which in turn led him to doing fentanyl.
"I'm pretty outspoken about my sobriety and how long I've been sober," the singer says, "but that shit snuck up on me. And to my surprise, shortly before my 14 years clean, I relapsed for about six to eight weeks. But then I got clean again. I flew to Massachusetts and went through withdrawals. I was with my parents and it was a really awful time, but it inspired that song."
Just as 2014's second album, Wake, contained "Anti-Eulogy (I Hope You Stay Dead)", a song about an active addiction framed as if addressing a person, so "Relapse Is A Love Affair" personifies his experience in a similar way.
"This time," he continues, "I associated it with a love affair. It feels like a lust that's always around and can always catch me cheating. You never really know when, but it's there and it's up to me to recognize that because it can really catch me off-guard. It felt like a long-lost lover had come back and was like, 'Do you remember me? Do you remember how good this was?' And I had to pull away again for obvious reasons. The chorus, in particular, reminded me how quickly I can fall back into that, because I didn't recognize the person I was or the things I was doing again."
It's a viscerally powerful moment among a whole series of viscerally powerful moments. For the first time in their career, Hail The Sun worked with production outfit Beach Noise, whose experience is much more steeped in the hip-hop world-most notably, they worked on a good chunk of Kendrick Lamar's acclaimed 2022 album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. On paper, it seems like a drastic shift, but the reality is less dramatic-Garcia actually went to college with a member of Beach Noise, so they've been in each other's orbits for a while now. Yet at the same time, Hail The Sun wanted to return to their roots of being a band in a room and jamming live. In order to do so, they went to Pus Cavern recording studios in Sacramento with Beach Noise in tow to craft the songs that had mostly been written already. So while cut. turn. fade. back doesn't see the band flip genres or anything, Beach Noise definitely had an active role in the creation of these songs, as well as their final product.
"Typically, it's just been the band who writes and works on our songs," says Garcia, "but this time around Beach Noise were in the room offering suggestions here and there. Most of the time they'd let us do our thing, but when inspiration struck they'd offer suggestions to guide things and let us explore avenues we might not have done otherwise."
And so, from the moment the post-hardcore lilt of "The Drooling Class" kicks this record off until the passionate intensity of "War Crimes" brings it to an end in a cacophony that emulates the violent conflicts that inspired it, cut. turn. fade. back becomes part of the band's own cycle-re-establishing who they are while simultaneously (but subtly) reshaping their identity. Just listen to the spiteful, coruscating energy of "There's No Place In Heaven For Fakes", the shapeshifting, surround-sound production of "Insensitive Tempo" and "Blight", and the almost constant crescendo of "I Can Tell By The Scars" and it's clear that Hail The Sun are as intentional and fervent about their art as they ever have been. The final two tracks on the record-"Rightless Destiny" (a song, says Meloro, "about a takeover and how the one thing you can't touch is people's spirits or their thoughts") and "War Crimes"-are both emotional juggernauts, but they also dial up the album's overt political overtones, taking aim at the damaging, harrowing effects of colonialism and imperialism, but tied in with deep, probing questions about destiny and providence. At the same time, they serve as affirmations about the strength of the human spirit. While Meloro's own personal example of that is encapsulated in "Relapse Is A Love Affair", those last two songs showcase it on a more collective, universal scale-the underbelly of the iceberg that contains all that profound meaning.
"It doesn't matter if people take away the intended message from these songs," says Meloro, "and I'm certainly not going to police it, but we do, as always, want to encourage critical thinking. Fifteen years in, I love that we've been allowed this fan base to speak to. I feel very grateful and fortunate, and I hope that it keeps carrying us forward continues to be the thing that we can sustain life from."
Ironically, given the title and the theme of the record, this could well be the album that sees them break the cycle for good.