“Ow, it's burning!”: watch Justin Hawkins try to play like Polyphia

Polyphia are at the helm of guitar music right now, consistently pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with the instrument. 

And their forthcoming album, Remember That You Will Die, looks to be as forward-thinking as ever, with its so-far-released singles packed to the rafters with infinitely complex and groovy syncopation, crystalline natural harmonics and jaw-dropping runs.

The most recent, Ego Death, finds the band’s dizzying proprietary sound bolstered by some more traditional legato lead playing by Steve Vai, and naturally, YouTubers across the guitar sphere have weighed in to share their thoughts.

Justin Hawkins – The Darkness frontman and creator of the Justin Hawkins Rides Again YouTube channel – has posted a new video reacting to the track, proclaiming simply: “I Just Don’t Get It.”

In the clip, Hawkins watches Ego Death’s music video, and attempts, only partially successfully, to decipher Tim Henson and Scott LePage’s head-spinning guitar parts.

After watching Henson’s percussive intro passage – which the Polyphia man plays using his just-released Ibanez TOD10N nylon-string signature guitar – Hawkins grabs his more traditionally spec’d Gibson acoustic guitar and tries to recreate its rapid legato slides.

But Polyphia’s music should come with a warning, as playing it can, as Hawkins discovers, cause actual physical pain.

“It’s an interesting technique. You see a lot of that in modern guitarists – they really move their whole hand around to slide up,” Hawkins says, before attempting the technique. “Oh, it’s burning!” he exclaims, after sliding between two notes for a little too long.

Elsewhere, Hawkins provides expert musical analysis, like noticing that drummer Clay Aeschliman rotates his drum kit 90 degrees counter-clockwise halfway through the video, causing the sun to shine on the left side of his face. “That’s analysis,” he jokes.

For more content from Justin Hawkins, head to his official YouTube channel.

In an interview in the new issue of Guitar World, Steve Vai recalls being taken aback at how manipulated his original contribution to Ego Death was when he heard it for the first time.

“Usually when I do something for somebody, they just take it the way it is,” he explains. “These guys are very creative, and they like to manipulate things. Which is fine, I told them, ‘Do whatever you like. Here’s what I’ve got.”

He continues: “It didn’t really matter – it’s not sacred. It was chopped in a way that met their creativity demands, and I wouldn’t want them to do anything else. When I first heard it, though, it was so different. I thought, ‘Maybe they didn’t like what I did!’

Henson, however, reassures Vai that his guitar solo was instrumental in shaping the artistic direction of the track.

“What we sent [Vai] was the first half of the song, which was done,” Henson says. “The second half of the song was an empty beat. Once we had this stuff, then we realized we needed to back him up. It’s like puzzle pieces, or like you’re chiseling away at a marble sculpture. 

“We [didn't] really know what we had until we got Steve’s part, and then we realized, ‘Oh shit. Here we fucking go.’”