STEVE HACKETT - STEVE ROTHERY - The Roaring Waves

The student meeting the master: a classic setup, in the end. But the crossing of guitars between Genesis and Marillion is an event that not even the most fervent imagination of progressive fans could have conceived. A project born eight years ago and carried forward through various recording sessions until – as the two put it in their interview with OndaRock – “we finally managed to bring the ship into port”.

So here's Steve Rothery, guitarist of Marillion, a band born in the late Seventies out of a devotion to Genesis before emancipating itself and building its own unmistakable language, finally meeting one of his masters: Steve Hackett, the man who had helped redefine the possibilities, tones and role of the guitar in British prog, right within the very band led first by Peter Gabriel and then by Phil Collins. More than a simple collaboration, then, “The Roaring Waves” feels like a crossing written into destiny between two branches of the same family tree. And it's an encounter that might not end here: as Hackett and Rothery told us in the interview, the chemistry was such that it left the door open to a possible follow-up record, besides the upcoming tour.

The good news is that, once the two Steves were put together, neither felt the need to stage a guitar Olympics. “The Roaring Waves” carefully avoids the most predictable trap: turning the meeting into a string of solos, displays of virtuosity and dueling guitars. Hackett and Rothery prefer to swap roles and give each other space. It's precisely from this complementarity that the record's character emerges: on one side, Rothery's liquid sustain, stretched-out bends and melodic phrasing; on the other, Hackett's eclecticism, moving from classical guitar to distortion, from twelve-string to sitar, from slide to blues inflections.
What holds the two personalities together is above all the atmospheric construction. Entirely instrumental, the album uses the sea as a theme not so much as a narrative concept but as a compositional principle: calm and storm, surface and depth, expansion and sudden acceleration shape the dynamics, tones and arrangements. The source of this imagery is Whitby, a coastal town in North Yorkshire where Rothery grew up and where the roar of the waves in winter became part of the guitarist's musical memory. It's a setting that recalls the atmospheres of “Beyond The Shrouded Horizon”, Hackett's 2011 album, where the salt air of British beaches soaked into more than one track. Musically, the result is a predominantly atmospheric prog, crossed with ambient, psychedelia, folk, blues and electronics, where Mellotron, Hammond, synthesizers and orchestrations add further depth to the sound, at times turning the clock back to 1975, the year of Hackett's legendary solo LP “Voyage Of The Acolyte”.

“The Storm” is the perfect introduction to the record: sounds of rain and wind set up a crescendo in which Daniele Pomo's drums take on an almost martial gait, while Hackett cuts in with a harsh, poignant electric line. “Sandsend”, by contrast, works through subtraction, slowing the pulse and leaning on long notes, on the spaces between phrases and on a suspended, Floyd-like melancholy, in which Rothery's melodic sensibility comes through most clearly.
“Red Dragon” changes course drastically: the opening hurdy-gurdy introduces an archaic, folk element, soon contaminated by Hackett's sitar guitar and a beefier riff from Rothery. Eastern psychedelia, Beatles-esque echoes and Celtic inflections alternate in quick succession, without turning the track into a mere exercise in name-dropping. “'Red Dragon' was the name of the ship used by the East India Company in its early years. I used, among other things, a sitar guitar to give it that genuine Eastern atmosphere”, explained the former Genesis guitarist.

The heart of the album, though, remains the title track. The acoustic opening brings Hackett back to his classical roots, with intricate arpeggios and an almost chamber-music touch; Rothery gradually steps into the gaps of the weave with licks and sustained notes, until bass, drums and synths widen the sonic spectrum and turn the piece into a long electric digression. It's one of the moments where the chemistry feels most natural: rather than simply trading solos, the two guitars end up forming a single melodic organism.
In some ways even more interesting is “K-129”, dedicated to the Soviet submarine that vanished in the Pacific during the Cold War. Here the traditional progressive component recedes in favor of dark electronics, close to the kosmische musik of the Seventies: synthetic pulses, sonar signals, rarefied percussion and heavily processed guitars drenched in delay and reverb build a claustrophobic space, with Leon Parr's drumming heightening the hypnotic feel, especially in the closing section. Rothery mostly exploits the depth of the sound, while Hackett introduces elements of greater harmonic instability. This may be the point where “The Roaring Waves” strays furthest from the reassuring idea of a meeting between two prog veterans.

“The Black Sea”, the first single released, extends this darker side: the rhythm stays restrained, almost ritualistic, while reverbs and keyboards create a sense of suspension over which Hackett lays down one of the album's most visionary solos. “Pacific Coast Highway” finally breaks the tension built up so far: Hammond, slide, Hackett's blues harp and a looser rhythm section steer things toward a blues-rock groove, while wordless female vocals (provided by the two musicians' respective wives, both named Jo) lend a sense of brightness. After depths, sonar and stormy seas, the album resurfaces with its most relaxed, direct episode.

“The Roaring Waves”, then, doesn't try to reinvent progressive rock nor to cash in on the bond linking Genesis and Marillion, long regarded as their heirs, if not, by their detractors, outright clones. Its main strength lies in its ability to let two immediately recognizable conceptions of the guitar coexist without forcing either to lose its identity. Around them, the work of Riccardo Romano on bass, keyboards and production, and Daniele Pomo on drums, both members of the historic Italian prog group Ranestrane, enriches the project, dodging the risk of reducing it to a mere duel between two guitars.
Rather than looking back at the history of progressive rock or staging speed contests, Hackett and Rothery seem interested in listening to each other, letting tone, dynamics and atmosphere tell the story of the relationship between their guitars. If “The Roaring Waves” really does get a follow-up, it will be this chemistry, even more than the prestige of its two protagonists, that makes it worth hearing. Give it another go, prog captains.

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18/09/2026