News
27 September 2026 – Polyphia Make Progressive Guitar Music Dance Again on With Eyes To See
By Editorial Team - September 27, 2026
Summary
Polyphia drop With Eyes To See, combining virtuoso prog guitars with pulsating house beats ahead of fifth studio album BE NOT AFRAID, out 23 October.
Key Facts
- Polyphia share third single 'With Eyes To See' from fifth LP BE NOT AFRAID, arriving 23 October via Rise Records.
- Blends complex instrumental guitar virtuosity with pulsating house rhythms and hip-hop production.
- Features collaborative songwriting inspired by Tim Henson's vocal melodic improvisations.
- Entities: Polyphia, With Eyes To See, BE NOT AFRAID, Tim Henson, Scott LePage, Clay Gober, Clay Aeschliman, Rise Records
- Tags: polyphia, with-eyes-to-see, be-not-afraid, tim-henson, progressive-metal, math-rock, electronic-rock, rise-records
Instrumental innovators Polyphia have released "With Eyes To See," the third advance single from their forthcoming fifth studio album BE NOT AFRAID, due 23 October through Rise Records. Anyone still imagining progressive guitar music as seventeen-minute jams performed by solemn men studying their pedalboards will need to update the paperwork immediately. Tim Henson, Scott LePage, Clay Gober and Clay Aeschliman increasingly treat virtuoso guitar as merely one ingredient in a much stranger cocktail involving metal, modern electronic production, hip-hop beat construction and, on the new material, pulsating house rhythms.
"With Eyes To See" pushes that genre-agnostic hybrid particularly hard. Henson approached portions of the album by vocalising melodic motifs before translating them onto guitar, encouraging the group to compose more collaboratively rather than building entire structures around technical fretboard geometry. The accompanying music video takes an equally unsettling route, combining hypnotic imagery with flashes of redacted documents and cinematic scenes suggesting global destruction.
Earlier singles "Can You Feel It" and "Power In The Blood" established the new record's sonic extremes, while Henson describes BE NOT AFRAID as traversing between triumphant, uplifting passages and genuinely frightening ones. "With Eyes To See" occupies the fascinating sweet spot between them. Polyphia remain absurdly capable instrumentalists, but the real triumph is making listeners forget that technical gymnastics are supposed to be the headline.