Australian metalcore outfit Polaris are a band on the rise. On their latest album, The Death of Me — the follow-up to the band’s 2017 debut LP The Mortal Coil — the hard-hitting upstarts swing ambitiously between emotive sing-alongs (“Masochist”) and aggro mosh-athons (“HyperMania”). It makes sense considering their sound that the band members would have been shaped by a variety of different kinds of music — from pop punk to hip-hop to shredding heavy metal. We recently caught up with drummer Daniel Furnari to find out what albums shaped him as a musician and a man.
Eminem – The Eminem Show
When I was about nine, my cousin got this record for Christmas and we spent so many days playing Playstation while cautiously pumping this record, hoping my aunt and uncle wouldn’t hear all the bad words.
Green Day – American Idiot
When you’re 11 years old and just starting to learn guitar and drums, and an album like that drops, it changes your whole world. I’m pretty sure I had learned every song on that record on both instruments by the end of that year and I’d say, more than any other record, it’s what inspired my primary school friends and I to start our very first band.
Blink-182 – Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
Another one that defined my early adolescence. Contains possibly Travis Barker’s best drum performances.
Avenged Sevenfold – City of Evil
When I was in high school, this album was my transition into metal — my introduction to double-kick drumming, guitar harmonies and more adventurous songwriting. I see them cop flack from some people nowadays, but the talent in this band is undeniable and the impact they were having, especially back then, was so wild.
Parkway Drive – Horizons
Australian metalcore’s holy grail. It showed a whole generation of kids from back home that if you wrote killer riffs and spent enough time on the road, you might actually end up living the dream.
