Events

HAIL THE SUN – cut. turn. fade. back bio 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.”