We love a good DIY story as much as we like seeing a local heavy band rock the ARIA charts. We’re still proud of Sydney metalcore favourites Northlane for topping the ARIA Album Chart back in August.

Now, another Aussie heavy band has gone ahead and carved out some ARIA chart success for themselves, and they’ve done it without the help of a record label. They’re called Polaris and they hail from Sydney.

Unsigned and totally independent, the metalcore outfit’s new EP, The Guilt and the Grief, entered the ARIA Album chart at #34, coming in at an incredible #11 for releases by Australian artists.

What’s even more incredible achievement is that the band managed to snag the Top 50 chart position without the physical copy sales of their EP through their Big Cartel page being tallied.

Since these were not counted as part of their ARIA-registered sales, the chart position comes entirely from sales via iTunes and digital stores, distributed by independent digital distributor Ditto Music.

The ARIA result comes in the same week Polaris debuted at #1 on the Rock and Metal chart on iTunes, as well as #6 overall, finishing up at #11 overall. The band definitely have reason to celebrate on their upcoming tour.

Big Cartel pre-orders for The Guilt and the Grief were processed by the band’s members themselves, including hand-written notes to their fans, thanking them for the purchase, with hundreds of physical CDs going out in the past two weeks.

“For us, having basically distributed a record out of our bedrooms, the idea of charting on the ARIAs was barely on our radar until the record had been selling for a few days,” said band member Daniel Furnari.

“This result is just far beyond whatever we’d hoped for and it’s so rewarding to see it come to fruition. Including those thank you notes to the people that purchased CDs was really important to us, as physical copies of music are so undervalued now so we’re especially thankful for anyone supporting us on that end.”

Polaris National Tour Dates

Thursday, 11th February 2016

Crowbar, Brisbane

Friday, 12th February 2016

Red Rattler, Sydney

Sunday, 28th February 2016

Rad Bar, Wollongong (AA)

Friday, 4th March 2016

Enigma Mar, Adelaide

Saturday, 5th March 2016

Worker’s Club, Melbourne