There is perhaps no better slogan in rock music than ‘Strings Are Voices,’ the maxim adopted by Texas-based instrumental prog outfit Scale The Summit, because it’s not easy to make it as an instrumental rock band. It is an extra special challenge to create concise and emotive rock songs with nothing but strings and percussion to tell the story.

In a style often maligned for self-indulgence and affectation, Scale The Summit have found a blissful space between musicality and technical fireworks—that is, they focus entirely on the songs, leaving their egos behind and using their collective virtuosity only as…

One of the greatest thrash metal bands of all-time, Testament blew the music industry away with the reunion of their original lineup and the subsequent release of their 2008 opus, The Formation Of Damnation. That was 25 years into their career.

After that amount of time, most bands either haven’t been speaking for 20 years or are embarking on one nostalgia tour after another. Testament, however, was reinvigorated, making the best music of their career, playing their biggest shows and pulverizing audiences across the globe the way few bands can.

Three years later, after the departure of drummer Paul…

There are few metal bands these days that aren’t looking up at Lamb Of God. The Richmond, VA-based band that long branded their style as “Pure American Metal” hasn’t lost a step in an increasingly competitive scene; they remain on top thanks to a stream of great albums and relentless live performances.

Their latest studio effort, Resolution, is due out on Jan. 24, and it’s as searing a pile of metal as you’re likely to crash into in 2012. From the lumbering sludge of opener “Straight For The Sun,” to the single, “Ghost Walking,” to the hardcore-affected “The Number…

If Dave Matthews Band and Dream Theater had a child, they would have named it Umphrey’s McGee. If Iron Maiden started jamming with Frank Zappa, the result might very well have been Umphrey’s McGee. If Radiohead was bitten by a radioactive King Crimson, they would have donned masks and jammed by night under the alias Umphrey’s McGee.

The Chicago-based band is an entirely unique, at times quirky, troupe of master class-level players with inhuman chops and no concept of stylistic boundaries to discourage them from doing exactly what they feel like. Quality studio albums and live shows characterized by…

It’s common practice on live albums to edit out mistakes or wrong notes, and on the tapes from this Dec. 1, 2009 performance (featuring no new songs) Yes—perhaps admirably—didn’t retouch their performance. As a result, the band shows their age on this three-disc (two CDs, one DVD) set.

Though fans have mixed feelings about Yes’ new singer, Canadian Jon Anderson sound-alike Benoît David, the man sounds near-perfect throughout the recording; it’s actually 64-year-old guitarist Steve Howe who seems to be loosing his touch. Howe’s parts are far from simple, but his leads are littered with accidentally muted notes and…

In a genre most often characterized by sparse, down-tempo orchestrations, San Francisco-based doom metal two-piece Black Cobra channel the gods of the riff with thrash-paced incantations of detuned, hardcore-affected anguish. Theirs is a sound of thorough desolation, and their most recent studio album, Invernal, their third full-length, is undoubtedly the best representation yet of their sophisticated brutality and mesmerizing heaviness.

I experienced the band live at the Bowery Ballroom in 2007 before ever hearing them before. I was introduced to a two-piece ensemble made up of guitarist/vocalist Jason Landrian and drummer Rafa Martinez with a sound as massive as…

With their inimitable brand of funky, dynamic and chaotic progressive metal, TesseracT are in the midst of setting themselves apart from their ‘djent’ contemporaries. The U.K.’s answer to Washington, D.C.-based trendsetters Periphery, the band insists on uniting soul and emotion with a polyrhythmic approach to all that is heavy.

One, released earlier this year, is the band’s first full-length offering through Century Media Records. Entirely free of the coarse self-indulgence of which metal is so often guilty, One flows through a spectrum of sounds from light to heavy, expansive to suffocating, with astonishing cohesion, mechanical accuracy and human passion.…

Long before their rise from underground acclaim to near-mainstream stardom since leaving Relapse Records in favor of Warner Bros. in 2006, Grammy-nominated Atlanta, GA-based progressive sludge metal road dogs Mastodon have built up and obliterated niche after cozy niche.

With their final Relapse release, 2004’s nautical thrash milestone Leviathan, Mastodon condensed their furious grindcore and Southern sludge metal influences into a relentless voyage of dissonant riffing and erratic percussion. It’s as extreme as it is memorable and as influential as it is jaw dropping, but still perplexing—offensive even—to those uninitiated to the metal palate.

Not content, however, with further…

Cynic is used to hard times. After forming in 1987, it took them until 1993 to release their debut album, the now legendary Focus. They’ve had their gear confiscated by foreign authorities, they’ve had their practice space destroyed by a hurricane and then, before anyone could take notice of their innovative sound, they stopped being a band. For 12 years.

So it should be of no surprise when the group’s main songwriter, the terminally philosophical singer/guitarist Paul Masvidal, recalls, “Since we got off tour last August 2010, it’s been a whirlwind for Sean [Reinert, drums] and I. We’ve been…

There may be no band more important to the development of modern, virtuosic progressive music than Yes. And, to that end, there is no person more important to the development of that band than their legendary (now former) singer and visionary Jon Anderson.

After being kicked to the curb in 2008 by his longtime bandmates when health issues prevented him from touring, Anderson has since recovered and he’s continuing to be creative; he released two albums last year, one as a solo artist and one with keyboardist Rick Wakeman, and he’s got much more on the way. At the…