Be not afraid, Polyphia have finally announced their next album.
Following June’s surprise “CAN YOU FEEL IT” single and a tour announcement, guitarist Tim Henson and the rest of the progressive outfit have confirmed that their fifth full-length is called BE NOT AFRAID, and it drops this fall. They’re also previewing the platter with a gloriously choppy and scale-contorting instrumental piece called “POWER IN THE BLOOD.”
The new song arrives in a music video that was partially filmed within the gold-leaf walls of the São Francisco da Penitência Church Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As you’ll hear via the player up above, the song is full of massive trap beats, guitar neck-wailing scale runs from Henson and more. Like “CAN YOU FEEL IT,” it also integrates sermon-styled vocal samples.
A press release notes that the upcoming BE NOT AFRAID finds Polyphia is a measure in extremes, with Henson saying that the songs move between “very uplifting and triumphant” and “spine-chilling and terrifying.” “There are moments on the record that legitimately scare me when I listen to them,” he said in a statement.
The band were working on the album between Miami, Los Angeles and Dallas, alongside album co-producer RJ Pasin and guitarist Spiro Dussias. Henson reportedly sang out song ideas before translating them over onto his fretboard, and the band began working out ideas from there.
“Instead of going wide on BE NOT AFRAID, we went as deep as we could,” Henson added. “There are so many layers to pull back. Every time you listen to it, you’ll notice something new. Thematically, it’s by far the most meaningful record we’ve ever made.”
“We physically can’t make the same album twice,” notes guitarist Scott LePage. “We have a yearning to evolve. It was so much fun to write this one together too – the writing sessions for past Polyphia records typically looked like us gathering our ideas separately first and bringing them to each other second, so we took a different approach with BE NOT AFRAID by treating the sessions like an opportunity to create with everybody in the room first before getting into the separate writing.
“It was a much more communal approach that led to us having so much fun making it that the fun itself was the magic being captured.”
Polyphia’s BE NOT AFRAID is out October 23rd via Rise Records, and it can be pre-ordered here.
While Polyphia’s North American tour was initially schedule to start next month, those dates have now been pushed to 2027. The tour is with RJ Pasin and Ladrones, and you’ll find the date details beneath BE NOT AFRAID’s cover art.
Polyphia, RJ Pasin, Ladrones tour dates 2027:
2/5 Phoenix, AZ – Arizona Financial Theatre
2/6 Las Vegas, NV – House of Blues
2/9 Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium|
2/10 San Diego, CA – SOMA #
2/11 Anaheim, CA – House of Blues
2/14 San Francisco, CA – The Masonic
2/17 Seattle, WA – Paramount Theatre
2/19 Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot
2/20 Denver, CO – The Fillmore Auditorium
2/23 Minneapolis, MN – Uptown Theater
2/24 Milwaukee, WI – Landmark Credit Union Live
2/25 Chicago, IL – Aragon Ballroom
2/26 Indianapolis, IN – Egyptian Room at Old National Centre
2/27 Detroit, MI – The Fillmore Detroit
3/2 Toronto, ON – Great Canadian Toronto *
3/3 Montreal, QC – L’Olympia *
3/5 Philadelphia, PA – The Fillmore Philadelphia
3/6 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
3/7 Boston, MA – MGM Music Hall at Fenway
3/9 Washington, DC – Echostage
3/10 Raleigh, NC – The Ritz
3/12 Charlotte, NC – The Fillmore Charlotte
3/13 Orlando, FL – Hard Rock Live
3/14 St. Petersburg, FL – Jannus Live
3/16 Atlanta, GA – Coca-Cola Roxy
3/17Birmingham, AL – Avondale Brewing Company
3/18 Nashville, TN – The Truth
3/20 Dallas, TX – South Side Ballroom
*with Intervals
#no Ladrones