Ryan Siew, the lead guitarist for the Australian metalcore band Polaris, passed away at the age of 26.
Polaris mourned the loss of their “best friend and artistic soulmate,” Siew, who joined the band in 2013, on Monday, June 19, expressing pleasant memories and remembering the things that brought their late bandmate delight, like Harry Potter, psych-thrillers, and crime documentaries.
Polaris writes that he loved music “more diversely than you could ever imagine and spoke its language in ways that only the rarest among us do.” This shows how passionately he felt about music. The band also asks that Siew’s family’s privacy be respected. The whole statement is provided directly below.
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Rick Shneider, a member of Polaris from their formation in 2012, shifted to rhythm guitar when Siew joined the band in 2023, taking over lead guitar responsibilities. He has been on both of the group’s full-length albums, Mortal Coil from 2017 and Death of Me from 2020. On September 1, Fatalism, the group’s third album, will be made available.
With Siew absent, Polaris last played on June 18 at the Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium. The band specified which events fans can still expect them to perform at in their statement, which stated that they will not be playing the remaining dates of their European tour “due to a serious personal crisis in our family,” which was made public two days later (on June 20).
The day before this declaration, Siew passed away, as is now known.
