Album review: Polar “No Cure No Saviour”
British post-hardcore band Polar are back with a new album, “No Cure No Saviour”, and some great punky shout-along choruses.
Polar is a post-hardcore band founded in Guildford, England in 2009. The new album, “No Cure No Saviour”, is solid – a great album of high energy music with no fillers.
The album’s opening track “Blood For Blood” starts on the heavy side with brutal and angry music which sounds as if someone is up on the barricades to start a revolution. As we reach the chorus we get the “shouting on the terraces of football stadiums” chant that is so typical for Polar. These are anthems rather just songs. Great stuff.
There’s plenty of pent-up aggression being released here but also great melodies among the noise. By post-hardcore, punk-rock standards, Polar is a relatively melodic bunch of rockers with some great choruses that are perfect for summer festival gigs.
The guttural singing of vocalist Adam “Woody” Woodford works great for Polar’s music. Most tracks on the album follow the same pattern – combining heavy post-hardcore music with some great underlying melodies and shout-along choruses.
The track “Until the Light” is a tad bit different. It sounds like a decent Britpop song and it’s really only the vocal style that makes this a bit punky. Other than that it is essentially a pop single. But a good one. “No Cure” is a beautiful atmospheric instrumental track that gives us some breathing space in the middle of the album. We also get the very brief “Cold Dark Nothing”, a moody instrumental track that sounds like a movie soundtrack from “Alien”.
The album’s main theme is centred around the ever-present problem of homelessness. The band has teamed up with Crisis, a charity for single homeless people in the UK, for a series of benefit gigs to raise money and further highlight this important issue.
Polar’s “No Cure No Saviour” will be released on Prosthetic Records on 6th May.
Polar – band members
Adam Woodford – vocals
Fabian Lomas – guitar
Thomas Green – guitar
Jonathan Bowman – bass
Nick Jones – drums
