Musically, instrumental rock has come a long way since the two-minute guitar grooves from early rock ‘n roll bands. “Moon Dawg” and “Misirlou” are no longer the standard. But despite significant advances in quality, scope, and complexity, instrumental rock is sadly mistreated, relegated to a remote corner of the music world.
I think instrumental rock began to show its true potential with the rise of progressive rock in the seventies. Rush, King Crimson, Kansas, and even the Alan Parsons Project produced some great instrumental classics. And as much popularity as these songs may have garnered, the recording artists who performed them almost always acheived greater recognition through songs with vocals.
In the eighties and nineties, progressive rock was phased out, and a lot of the instrumental mentality went with it. Not that that stopped some performers. Joe Satriani, for example, released an entire album of instrumental-only rock, “Surfing With the Alien”, which heroically met with a surprising amount of chart success.
The first decade of the new millenium continued a trend from the mid-nineties or so. A widening, ever-splintering array of musical genres gave birth to new niches in the industry, and some of those niches were filled with bands who preferred not to utilize the human voice. Unfortunately, these bands and their niches are somewhat obscure. Some instrumental groups, such as Gordian Knot and Planet X, have found creative release in the form of jazz fusion, sometimes with a progressive edge. Other groups rode the rising underground wave of post-rock, a genre arising from the nineties. Post-rock bands such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor have gained impressive worldwide success without having to bother with vocal melodies.
But the average kid on the street doesn’t know who Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Gordian Knot are. Planet X has not released a hit single or charted in the Billboard 200. As successful in their own spheres of influence as these artists may be, they remain largely underground. So where else is instrumental rock to be found in the modern era?
The recent resurgence of progressive rock has produced bands that, in a similar vein to classic prog artists, include an instrumental or two on many of their albums. Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater have led the charge, though both seem to be moving away from purely instrumental tracks on their most recent releases. A personal favorite of mine is Pain of Salvation’s “Dryad of the Woods,” a song that reassures the listener that rock musicians are capable of beauty, not just noise. A lot of these prog and new prog bands have also been including lengthy instrumental sections in songs that may also include vocals. Porcupine Tree’s eighteen-minute epic, “Anesthetize,” contains three distinct vocal sections but spends most of its time meandering between them in an instrumental juxtapositioning of heavy metal and ambient. Muse’s “Citizen Erased” is a more well-known example of lengthening intermediate sections in New Prog music.
But where are the instrumental songs in mainstream, Top 40 rock music? Nickelback, Evanescence, Linkin Park and other rock chart-toppers don’t seem to have much interest in songs without singing. In fact, the only significant example of instrumental rock that I’ve noticed recently was the intro and outro on Breaking Benjamin’s “Phobia.” But as cool as those two short songs were, if Breaking Benjamin is instrumental rock’s best hope for mainstream glory, then maybe the genre will never be as successful as it deserves.
But if you ask me, the mainstream rock world doesn’t realize what it’s missing. While vocals are an important part of music, sometimes stripping it away can remove distractions and allow the listener to realize how great the sounds in his ears really are.
