Polyphia

Polyphia writes rock music without a singer, building songs around two lead guitars that trade melodies the way a vocalist and a producer might. The grooves come from hip-hop and trap — skittering hi-hats, sub-heavy bass, sudden drops — while the guitar parts run to clean tones, tapped arpeggios and nylon-string passages that owe as much to flamenco and bossa nova as to metal.

Everything is instrumental, so structure carries the weight lyrics usually would. The pieces are short, hook-led and densely arranged, with a rhythm section that plays to the beat rather than around it and guitar lines written to be memorable rather than merely difficult. Across four studio albums the band has moved from technical progressive metal towards something closer to production-led pop, keeping the virtuosity but spending it on melody.

Guitarists Tim Henson and Scott LePage formed the band around 2010, while still at school, and its audience was built online before it was built in venues — a playthrough video of an early track circulated widely in 2013 and turned a local band into an international one. The studio catalogue runs from Muse through Renaissance, New Levels New Devils and Remember That You Will Die, each a step further from those metal beginnings.

On stage the four-piece plays the records closely, which in this repertoire is the point: the interlocking guitar parts are hard enough that hearing them executed cleanly, at volume, with the low end intact, is the event. The mood sits nearer a rap show than a prog concert — heavy sub-bass, tight transitions, and a crowd that reacts to riffs the way other crowds react to choruses.

It suits guitarists and non-guitarists alike, anyone after melody, rhythm and playing of a high order without a word being sung.