Articles

The Story of Polyphia: The Genre-bending 4-piece Band

The Metalverse

Mar 29, 2023 — 3 min read

The Story of Polyphia - Cover

What Genre is Polyphia?

Polyphia is a math rock/progressive rock band that blends influences from rap, pop, metal, metalcore, jazz, and classic rock. With such a wide list of influences, they create a highly varied sound with songs featuring trap beats, breakdowns, brass instruments, rapping, and more. The Band is mostly instrumental but some of their most recent music has featured vocalists such as Chino Moreno of Deftones and more.

Polyphia's History

Polyphia was founded in 2010 in Plano, Texas. Their early sound was instrumental metalcore with progressive influences, their first EP, "Inspire" was released in 2013 and followed this sound. A guitar playthrough of the song "Impassion" from this EP gained a lot of popularity on YouTube, racking up over a million views. Polyphia was touring and playing shows a lot but quickly realized that it was not worth it for them, instead focusing on making YouTube videos and digital marketing. It was around this time that Tim Henson (lead guitarist) quit his job as a graphic designer and dropped out of college to go all in on music, knowing it was what he truly loved. The band started an online fundraiser that started to gain traction and actually allowed the band to record their first studio album, "Muse" in 2014.

Controversy

Their crowd-funded album, "Muse" really allowed Polyphia to show off the sound they had been developing and gained a lot of popularity. By the time Polyphia released their next album, "Renaissance" their sound was growing much more progressive and beginning to add a lot more elements from modern pop and hip hop. Their 2017 single, "Lit" leaned into this style even more, even mixing in EDM. At this point, the changes in Polyphia's sound were particularly controversial with some fans wanting the band to return to their roots of metalcore and more shredding-based music. By this point, Polyphia was onto something with their blends of pop beats in their music and they continued with these innovations and even joked about the controversy with their 2017 EP, "The Most Hated". This 6-song EP has energetic guitar harmonies and thumping bass along with trap beats, creating one of the most defined sounds of their career yet.

Refining their Style

In 2018 Polyphia released their single "G.O.A.T" which blew up on a level none of their music had up until that point. The song uses the same thumping bass and intricate guitar melodies with even more pop production and electronic elements, following along with an iconic church bell melody. The drums are all played live with real drums creating drum patterns replicating trap and pop-style beats. "G.O.A.T" gathered a ton of hype for their 2018 album, "New Levels New Devils" which has their first-ever vocal feature, Cuco.

Polyphia released singles, "Look But Dont Touch" and "Inferno" in 2019 before going quiet for 3 years before dropping, "Playing God" in 2022. This song was incredibly popular similar to "G.O.A.T" but was very different using acoustic guitar, the signature thumping bass, whistling that was inspired by the game franchise, Animal Crossing, and even more pop and electronic production elements. Polyphia went on to release 3 more singles, "Neurotica", "ABC", and "Ego Death" before releasing their latest full album, "Remember That You Will Die". This features vocalists, Sophia Black, Killstation, $NOT, Lil West, and Chino Moreno. "Remember That You Will Die" is an incredible album mixing multiple genres and showing the incredible songwriting and production that Polyphia possesses. They have grown to be one of the biggest modern progressive rock bands and we are very excited to hear what they create next! If you have never listened to Polyphia, they are a band you need to check out! Here is one of our favorite songs, "Playing God".