It’s not every day you get to watch heavy music unfold with the ocean behind the stage, but that’s exactly what happened when Polaris brought their new festival Life’s A Beach to Melbourne’s Riviera Beach Club.
Temperatures pushed well past 35 degrees as fans made their way to the waterfront venue for the inaugural event. For metal fans, it was a pretty easy call on how to spend a scorching summer Saturday. A beachside venue, a stacked lineup and Polaris themselves hosting the whole thing.
Life’s A Beach marked the band’s first attempt at curating their own festival and the turnout showed just how strong their following has become. Fans packed the venue throughout the afternoon, taking in the ocean views, grabbing food from the trucks and lining up at the large merch stand before settling in for the music.
The lineup mixed Australian heavy hitters with international names, but the gallery here focuses on the band who brought the whole thing together. After spending much of the day watching the action unfold from a viewing platform beside the stage, Polaris looked genuinely fired up when it was finally their turn.
Their headline set wasted no time kicking into gear with ‘Dissipate’ and ‘Vagabond’, quickly followed by crowd favourites ‘The Remedy’ and ‘Masochist’. From there the band kept the pace up with ‘Consume’, ‘Crooked Path’, ‘All Of This Is Fleeting’ and ‘Inhumane’, before pushing things even further with ‘Hypermania’ and ‘Martyr (Waves)’ as the sun disappeared over St Kilda.
An encore of ‘Harbinger’ and ‘Nightmare’ brought the night to a close and capped off a festival that felt like a genuine celebration of the heavy community.
Scroll through the gallery below to see Polaris bringing Life’s A Beach to life on the St Kilda shoreline.
Photos by Philippa Louise Grosse
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