Anything by Pelican. They’re a quite good metal group that is entirely instrumental.
Just thought of another one: Liquid Tension Experiment. They’re composed primarily of members of Dream Theater but they do all instrumentals.
I haven’t kept up with his recent output, but the guitar wiz Joe Satriani has written some great, great instrumental hard rock over the years. *Surfing with the Alien * and Flying in a Blue Dream are the CDs I’m essentially familiar with, but most of his albums have at least a few choice examples. (Check out “One Big Rush” and “Back to Shalla Bal” in the link I provided.)
Great suggestions so far. How about some Rush? There’s La Via Strangiato, YYZ, large instrumental portions of By Tor and the Snowdog and 2112, to name a few.
At least two Wishbone Ash songs would be great for this purpose: FUBB (There’s the Rub) and Outward Bound (New England).
I also second the King Crimson nominations.
There’s also Kansas’ **Magnum Opus **- not a pure instrumental, but it has just eight lines of lyrics in the middle of a very long song.
Hmmm. Howzabout Edgar Winter’s Frankenstein?
“Reoccurring Dreams” by Hüsker Dü. Also, “Metal Machine Music” by Lou Reed.
“Just Like You Imagined”, “Complication”, by Nine Inch Nails
“Triad” by Tool
I strongly recommend Musipal by Wagon Christ. (That’s the name of both an album and a song, and I’m referring to just the song.)
Check out some of the early stuff by Critters Buggin, especially their first album ‘Guest’. They are a bunch of session musicians around Seattle that do alot of different projects. Their line up is drums, bass, Hammond organ, and tenor saxophone with heavy effect processing (distortion, wah pedals, phaser, etc). I always imagine their early music that if there was a movie about a group of bad-ass hitmen that were demonic monsters, this is the music that would be playing as they walked in slow-motion onto the screen.
representing the nerdy gamer selection:
The Black Mages, a group of current and former Square-Enix music dept. employees who perform hard-rock/heavy-metal arrangements of Final Fantasy music from Nobuo Uematsu’s tenure as series composer. Their music’s also available on iTunes.
It’s often surprising just how good a lot of it is. Obviously the battle music transitions well (seeing as how it was already meant to have an up-tempo, intense sound), but a lot of other things are pretty impressive. The Skies Above, from the album with the same name, may have an odd choice for lead singer (doesn’t really fit the style of the song), but the adaptation of the sombre piano solo Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X as the base for a heavy metal piece is awesome. Also, Dancing Mad, the music from the final confrontation in Final Fantasy VI never sounded so good (especially the one part starting about 2/3 in, which is done as a guitar solo).
Hurrr… my name’s Henry, hurrr
note to self: read thread title more closely :smack:
Anyway, as for my suggestion, only two songs, the aforementioned The Skies Above and Otherworld have singing. All the others are instrumentals, many are rearrangements of music (originally written more or less for an orchestra) to be played by a 5-piece band (2 guitars, bass, drums, keyboard) in a hard-rock/heavy metal sound.
A few other good current bands: Russian Circles, Mono, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Kronos Quartet has some pretty heavy instrumentals, as does Savatage.
Zabali_Clawbane recommended Apocalyptica, and I second that one, too.
There’s a cellist by the name of Claude Lamothe who kicks ass, although his live performances are more metal than what he has on CD.
Hellecasters - Escape From Hollywood or Return of the Hellecasters
John Ellis (ex-Stranglers, etc.) has a series out called Gallery Music.
Six cds originally composed for playing in a German art gallery. The mood varies, but a fair amount is quite sombre or dark.
Das Geheimnis Des Golem might suit. It’s #2 in the series.
Hocus Pocus by Focus, if you don’t count yodelling…
Bach: Heavy Organ At Carnegie Hall
Fear Factory “Machine Debaser” is probably the heaviest instrumental I’ve come across. One could also consider “Intro to reality” by Anthrax.
Arch Enemy “Vox Stellarum”
Opeth “Silhouette”
Jeff Kollman “Neo 80s mumbo jumbo” is a grippingly intense minute and a half of heavy shred. This was the first song that came to my mind after reading your description/request.
I just remembered Sepultura’s “Kamaitachi”, that’s kinda heavy too.
And for something a little different, Megadeth’s “Duke Nukem” theme. And why not the theme from Red Alert. Available here:
ftp://ftp.westwood.com/pub/redalert/previews/audio/hellmarch.mp3