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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.