Polyphia - New Levels New Devils

I stumbled upon Polyphia in a very odd manner, seeing a picture of this album’s chart position somewhere with a tweet from the band saying something along the lines of “fuck yes, get more good fucking Christian metal to the top guys!” Something like that, the combination of the allusion to Christian metal and the swearing immediately gave away the tweet’s joking nature, but I just had to see what kind of album a band like that would be releasing, and it turns out this band has been creating quite a bit of buzz around their name, especially lately. And my curiosity was quite well-treated.

As far as jokes go, the band do pull another one on the album itself. The ever-effective deterrent of the Parental Advisory label at the bottom right hand of the cover is in itself a subtle joke being slapped (certainly by the band themselves) on the front of a fucking instrumental math rock album with one completely inoffensive vocal line on the whole thing. Perhaps the band are making a bit of a statement about music itself being inherently offensive, iuhhhdunnnuhhh.

But anywho, as far as that actual musical content goes, New Levels New Devils, is kind of this weird dichotomy of conservative and liberal… musically speaking. Again, it’s an instrumental album. From one angle that album goes by as a pretty business-as-usual math-prog album, trying to throw in the occasional quirks to seem eccentric, but mostly pretty a standard exhibition of the kind of proggy math rock that bands like Scale the Summit practice. But on the other side of this coin, Polyphia show themselves to not give a fuck about the status quo of prog rock, with much more unique flair than what usually accompanies releases in this genre. The album traverses the usual guitar dance routines and makes a point to never linger too long on one time signature (however weird it is) while making its presenting its dazzling displays of the band’s instrumental proficiency. Laden with rich, slapping bass guitar lines and circus-stunt-like drumming, New Levels New Devils is everything this genre is built upon, which is why its use of such uncharacteristic elements of other genres is so defiant. The band can’t be discounted as not creating prog/math rock, but the oddly hip hop inspired sampling and 808 flashes, combined with the structural/directional influences of pop and hip hop, are so nearly outrageous within the genre, the album’s title and the glitzy trap-rap-esque cover art (and its advisory label) begin to make sense.

This very bold implementation of influences not often heard within the genre doesn’t just walk up to you and smack you in the face. It’s still subtle and weaved into the album well, and like I said before, this album still makes sure it checks every box on the math rock checklist definitively. The easy, predictable prog move would be to toss several of these novel hip hop-influenced ideas in chunks within the mix and have it end up being really choppy and shallow, only using the novelty of something like trap-influenced synthesized hi-hat sample for that alone, he novelty. But New Levels New Devils is much more fluid than that, and I think it has to do with the band writing more consciously with those genres in mind as they’re doing so. Rather than just tossing in a weird sample for eccentricity points and moving along, Polyphia make these new elements a more integrated part of the album at the level of the writing, which is really the core of what sets it apart from other music in this field.

And that’s great an all, but that well-intentioned direction wouldn’t be worth shit if the band didn’t have the arsenal of ideas they brought to the table or if they didn’t execute well. They came prepared for the test, and they performed well. The rumbly bass line on the track, “O.D.” backing the fretboard guitar tango with the oddly timed drums, the virtuoso soloing that emerges from the trap-beat guitar tracing on the opening track, “Nasty”, and the on chopped up vocal snippet amid the tastefully flashy drumming and guitar palying on “Yas” all gel so surprisingly well. I mean, the band are clearly well-versed in the genres they’re incorporating. The beginning of the song “G.O.A.T.” gets me thinking some trap bass is just come in and some Lil rapper is about to hit me with some ad libs about being rich and doing xans, and the varied time signatures of the drums keep that vibe going. The band carry as much swagger with their instruments as someone like Denzel Curry or Travis Scott do with their smooth flows and cool delivery.

The song “So Strange” features the only prominent vocal feature, the short, cleanly sung mantras fit the soothing atmosphere of the song, which also features some of the most upfront trap-inspired 808s over its rumbly bass guitar foundation and dazzling-as-usual guitar fret-work. Meanwhile the band take a jazzier, yet more traditional prog rock approach on the song “Death Note” to prove ever definitively that their oddity is by no means overcompensation for a lack of standard writing or playing chops.

I was pretty impressed with this kind of random find, and I am pleased with how well this seems to be being received by fans as well. In a genre that all too often tries too hard with momentary gimmicks in the form of dashes of amateur incorporation of far-off genres, Polyphia do so well to crush any notion that what they’re doing is merely for attention. They are undeniably competent with everything they bring to the table, and even in their most eccentric moments, it never feels like a cheap attention-grab. The band display pure class on their respective instruments, and they channel unexpected cool in their compositions. I can only hope there’s more of this in store for the future from the band themselves, but I also dare to dream that perhaps this shakes the hibernating prog rock scene into a new binge of the type of ambition that should be characteristic of the genre.