POLYPHIA

Liberated Texan collective mixing genres and cultures with a little help from Steve Vai.

Risky business! Polyphia, L-R: Clay Gober, Tim Henson, Scott LePage, Clay Aeschliman.

PRESS/TRAVIS SHINN

“MY INTRODUCTION TO music wasn’t necessarily out of love,” Tim Henson confesses. “My mom had me on violin at age three and it was just something that I did, I didn’t really care for it.”

It wasn’t until hearing rapper Bow Wow on a McDonald’s commercial when he was nine that Henson, born to a Chinese mother and American father, began liking music. By the end of high school he was hooked, religiously, on Animals As Leaders and Periphery, inspiring him to turn his lifelong friendship with schoolmate Scott LePage into a musical one. From them, the nucleus of Polyphia was conceived.

“Scott and I grew up together,” says Henson, “but it wasn’t until we were in high school that we first jammed together. We only knew how to play dad licks and death metal, but it was at that moment I knew our styles worked so well together. As we grew our repertoire, we grew together. Constantly trying to push the envelope was how we got from there to here.

“We started venturing out of the genre, listening to rap and pop and anything that had nothing to do with us,” he continues. “We were just sucking everything in, doing what we could to make our sound more unique and niche.”

After two impressive LPs, 2014’s Muse and 2016’s Renaissance, their The Most Hated EP a year later saw them truly bastardise their sound for the first time. It was a slew of tech-prog, hip hop, J-pop, jazz and other wildly contrasting flavours that somehow complimented one another.

He says, “Polyphia had evolved into its own thing over time and that was a pivotal moment in our career. That was when we started building a proper fanbase that really cared about our music.”

Their nonchalance for stylistic conformity developed further still when, on their guest vocalist-filled latest album, Remember That You Will Die, the band was able to recruit, piss off and then blow away their idol, Steve Vai.

PROG FILE

LINE-UP

Tim Henson (guitars), Scott LePage (guitars), Clay Gober (bass), Clay Aeschliman (drums)

SOUNDS LIKE

Plini, Steve Vai, hip hop, J-pop and ghost peppers all blended into one

CURRENT RELEASE

Remember That You Will Die is out now via Rise Records

WEBSITE

www.polyphia.com