Polyphia’s fourth album, Remember That You Will Dietook the Texas instrumentalists to viral heights that seemed impossible for virtuoso guitar music in 2022. Flanked by guests spanning Steve Vai to Deftones’ Chino Moreno and rappers Snot and Lil West, it was an eclectic collection, to say the least.
But as guitarist Tim Henson revealed exclusively to Guitar Worldthe band’s next effort will be more singular in focus – and it’s inspired by their desire to bring their hybrid brand of hyper-shred to bigger and bigger audiences.
“It’s heavy,” Henson told us at NAMM 2025 while promoting his new string collaboration with Ernie Ball. “That’s exciting for us, and I think last year was really eye-opening for us in terms of how we should start composing for the live performance.”
Last year saw Henson, Scott LePage, and co brave their first proper festival circuit, hitting up European institutions like Pinkpop, Rock Am Ring, and Hellfest.
By upping the heaviness, the group are hoping to bring more energy to their live sets to satiate riff-hungry festival crowds – and while Henson says he doesn’t want to “tone it down in the technicality department,” he does want to “make sure that it can work and just be executed really well.” And that may mean a little less of the Playing God-spotlighted nylon-string in future.
“Playing a nylon-string to 80,000 people is a little like… when you think of a nylon-string, you think of a dude in a coffee shop, right?” he says. “So, it’s a little disconnect there. We’re excited to really hone that in and really make the music bigger for that kind of audience now.”
As for the guitar approach, Henson has teased more distortion, more extended-range models – and the possibility of entirely new Ibanez signature guitars to accompany the release.
“(There’s) lots of eight-string. We’re playing baritones and stuff, too. We’re just making new guitars that don’t exist for the sole purpose of writing something really, really cool with it, so that if you want to learn it, you’re gonna have no choice but to buy that guitar! (laughs) It’s the Playing God treatment, right?”
But while Polyphia are going in more brutal directions, don’t expect them to back off on their genre-splicing production – Henson also emphasizes the record’s focus on sound design, inspired by recent jams with Kanye West collaborator and hip-hop synth production mogul Mike Dean.
If there’s one other thing you can bet on a Polyphia album having, it’s some big-name – and often surprising – collaborators, and you need only look to their forthcoming tour dates for a hint at who’s to come.
“We have one with Serj (Tankian) from System of a Down and we just finished a second Babymetal collab – that’s for their record, though, and we’re working on one to send them for our record. So hopefully we’ll make that one come to fruition.”
Polyphia are set to support System of a Down, alongside Korn, Avenged Sevenfold, and Deftones, with six enormous stadium shows in August/September this year. But in between they’ll be booking studio sessions to keep track of the record’s process and figure out just who else would make sense to hit up for a guest spot.
The band had previously name-dropped everyone from Zakk Wylde to Fall Out Boy, Meshuggah, and Thundercat as dream collabs. Whatever happens, we can expect a more focused effort.
“Remember That You Will Die was very much a showcase of range for us where we’ve got songs like ABCwhich is a J-pop song, and then songs like Bloodbath with Chino, where it’s super-heavy, and songs like Playing God where it’s nylon-strings, and The Audacitywhich is crazy jazz. For this record, rather than being all over the place, (we’re) pinpointing the sound and really going deeper into it, rather than wider.”
Sounds good to us. In the meantime, we can’t help but wonder if that renewed spotlight on brutality could finally see Henson’s oft-sighted signature eight-string become a reality. Make it happen, Ibanez…
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings