Hail The Sun (USA)
HAIL THE SUN have announced their first Australian headline tour for June 2026, in support of their newest record cut. turn. fade. back
The band have toured extensively on their latest release, with sold out shows and massive stages across North America, the UK, Europe and South America.
In the midst of it all, the band will return for a full national tour covering Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide & Perth following a rapturous debut in Australia in February 2025 alongside touring partners The Fall of Troy & Closure in Moscow.
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.
This record truly goes the distance.
“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 TheSun 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 ownrealities, doing what we want, and letting the universe do its thing. I would describe this as another cycle of living in general. But it also comes from what I call a higher frequency mindset—an elevated purpose of trying to exist knowing we are the universe.”
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 backinto 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 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 awfultime, but it inspired that song.”
Just as 2014’s second album, Wake, contained “Anti-Eulogy (I Hope You Stay Dead)”, asong about an active addiction framed as if addressing a person, so “Relapse Is A LoveAffair” personifies his experience in a similar way.
“It doesn’t matter if people take away the intended message from these songs,” says Melero, “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.
Watch ‘The Drooling Class’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXJzdtQAb1o&list=RDkXJzdtQAb1o&start_radio=1
Watch ‘Relapse is a Love Affair’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWXGOGWcqM4&list=RDfWXGOGWcqM4&start_radio=1
Watch Hail the Sun live in Philadelphia