The Polyphia boys, unlike most of their stern-faced, uptight prog contemporaries, aren’t interested in taking themselves too seriously. In many ways, they carry themselves like a bunch of trendy, unbothered millennials – they won’t set foot on a stage without their trusted Gucci flip-flops, catch some of their interviews and you’ll quickly learn that they’re down with youth culture, and contemporary trap and electronic music makes up much of what guitarists Tim Henson and Scott LePage are listening to nowadays. Building off their The Most Hated EP, New Levels New Devils presents a cleaner and more versatile Polyphia – they’ve rolled the distortion on their guitars way down and opted for a sound that’s more akin to math rock than anything. Sure, Polyphia may have always had more melodic sensibilities than many of their instrumental prog counterparts, but New Levels New Devils is the freshest sound the band have tackled yet.
