Two Eras of Progressive Rock Meet on Open Water
The Roaring Waves is an instrumental guitar album where Steve Hackett of Genesis and Steve Rothery of Marillion combine their progressive rock legacies into seven sea-themed pieces shaped by memory, atmosphere, and narrative guitar work rather than vocals or radio-driven hooks.
The headline isn’t that Steve Hackett Genesis veteran and Steve Rothery Marillion mainstay finally made a record together; the headline is that it refuses to be a fan-service jam session. Two titans of progressive music known as progressive rock guitarists have spent nearly a decade shaping The Roaring Waves album into something fluid, cinematic, and at times disarmingly intimate, written and recorded intermittently at Racket Club and their home studios through an organic, improvisational process. Instead of trading solos like sports highlights, they share space, letting ideas drift, collide, and merge like currents. This is a bridge between classic and neo-prog eras that behaves less like a museum piece and more like a living seascape.
Red Dragon: Where Collaboration Starts to Bite
Red Dragon is the first moment where their collaboration bares its teeth: a faster, rockier single that makes clear this project isn’t all ambience. It opens with the ghostly grind of a hurdy gurdy, an instrument rooted in medieval Europe, before Steve Rothery drops a heavy guitar riff and Steve Hackett answers with melodic lines and sitar guitar, pushing an Eastern flavor into the storm. The title itself nods to the early East India Trading Company ship, which Hackett evokes by using sitar guitar to “give that authentic Eastern feel.” This track matters because it shows these progressive rock guitarists are willing to increase the tempo and hit harder, using dynamics and texture instead of vocals to carry tension and release. Red Dragon sets expectations: this sea can churn.
Painting with Guitars: An Instrumental Conversation
What makes The Roaring Waves more than a curiosity is its decision to stay fully instrumental. Hackett describes it bluntly: “It’s not the kind of album that guitarists normally make together,” underlining how the record moves between the cinematic and the intimate instead of defaulting to shred duels. Across pieces like The Storm, Sandsend, K-129, The Black Sea, and Pacific Coast Highway, the pair treat guitars, keys, and textures as brushstrokes, not spotlights. Rothery likens the approach to painting, saying you are trying to create an atmosphere and take people on a journey. That journey is where their eras meet: Hackett’s lyrical phrasing and love of unusual timbres fold into Rothery’s widescreen, sustained melodicism. Without a singer in the way, their signatures are exposed, letting listeners hear how each bends harmony, sustain, and space differently while still landing on shared emotional ground.
Why The Roaring Waves Matters for Progressive Rock Now
This collaboration matters less as a nostalgia event and more as a statement about what progressive rock guitarists can do when they stop chasing past glories. Years in the making, The Roaring Waves album is shaped by long conversations, half-remembered jams, and a willingness to leave gaps for imagination. It respects the iconic status of Steve Hackett Genesis alum and Steve Rothery Marillion stalwart without treating that history as the main attraction. Instead, the attraction is how two distinct eras of prog learn from each other: classic symphonic drama meeting neo-prog’s cinematic restraint. With The Roaring Waves finally set for release on August 28 via InsideOutMusic, and Red Dragon already signalling the rockier edge of the project, the message is clear: progressive rock’s past isn’t finished talking, and it still has new stories to tell in the language of guitar.
