Throughout my years of playing drums and listening to prog and prog-adjacent sub-genres, it has always amazed me how few drummers are well known despite their immeasurable talent. Even in more popular music, drummers are often just an afterthought except for rare cases, like Neil Peart, John Bonham, and Keith Moon. Even these names are from a past generation and music has become more and more about vocals and less about the rest of the musicians. Thus, I put together this list of lesser-known progressive metal drummers who inspired me while I was learning to play.
Troy Wright
First on this list is Australian drummer Troy Wright. He started out playing drums at the age of 10 and ended up pursuing music as a career all throughout his life. Unlike the other progressive metal drummers on this list, he actually gained all of his notoriety from his Youtube channel and subsequent opening of his own music school, The Wright Drum School. Later on this became just Wright Music School, since they expanded to include other instruments.
I first found Troy’s Youtube channel when I got super into TesseracT, and I was trying to learn ‘Of Mind – Nocturne‘ on drums. His cover stuck out to me because he had part of the video dedicated to the actual cover, but the first part was a lesson where he transcribed some of the hardest parts and showed how to play them at different speeds. He went on to do full transcripts for this song and many other awesome prog songs from bands like Meshuggah, Periphery, and Animals as Leaders. Best of all, they are available on his website for free!
Troy still runs his music school, but since he has built up a nice staff, he’s had more free time to pursue other musical endeavors. He connected with another Australian musician, Plini, and ended up touring with him for awhile as well as recording drums on the album, Hand Made Cities. Since his success touring with Plini, Troy has also toured with Intervals, David Maxim Micic, and Nick Johnston. Personally I think that says a lot about him as a drummer, because it takes an extremely talented individual to play in an instrumental group. You don’t normally have conventional song structure to rely on, so a lot of grooves and sections are unique and constantly changing.
Troy Wright is a beast when it comes to ghost notes. He could be smashing his china cymbal in a heavy Meshuggah breakdown and still be gently tapping his ghost note accents like an artist with a paintbrush. His timing is also impeccable, and he often is keeping time with his left foot when he doesn’t need it for double bass. I find this to be one of the most impressive talents that a drummer can have, as it signifies a complete dissociation of all 4 limbs. Troy’s drumming (maybe because I saw that video first) often reminds me of Jay Postones of TesseracT, who is another good example of a drummer who keeps time on the hi-hat even through insane time changes.
Anup Sastry
Anup Sastry is a phenomenal drummer from Frederick, Maryland, which is extremely close to the area of Maryland where I grew up. He first started his music career by posting videos on Youtube, and eventually this got him noticed by some musicians and he began playing with a lot of different bands.
I first learned about Anup when I discovered Guiding Lights, the second album from Skyharbor. Guiding Lights is a masterpiece, with legendary Daniel Thompkins of TesseracT on vocals, and Keshav Dhar, who wrote their entire first album as solo project on guitar before joining with Anup and a bassist also from India. Guiding Lights is one of my top albums of ALL TIME. It’s an absolute masterpiece and I will love it to the end, so go listen to it right now if you’re reading this and haven’t heard it before.
Along with the amazing Skyharbor, He also was involved with some other bands/projects. Sometime before Skyharbor actually, Anup joined the band Intervals, the brain child of Aaron Marshall. I don’t really want to make this post about Intervals when it’s supposed to be about Anup (and others), but there’s some interesting stuff that went down. Intervals started as an instrumental group, but with the intention to add vocals at some point. At some point between their second EP, In Time, and their debut album, A Voice Within, bassist Mike Semesky ended up becoming the vocals and dropping his role as bassist.
Sometime after that album came out, Aaron began working on another album by himself, and also ended up having heart surgery during this time. Forunately, his surgery went well, but unfortunately, he kicked Mike out of the band with the intention of writing a purely instrumental album. From what I heard, there was a long period of time when Marshall was not communicating with them (I believe the heart surgery falls somewhere in this time), finished an entire album by himself, and then replaced both Anup and Lukas Guyader (the other guitarist) with session musicians so that Intervals could really just be Aaron Marshall. I also heard along my music travels that Marshall had seen how Polyphia gained a ton of popularity even though they didn’t have vocals, and he was a bit jealous. If they could make their instrumental project work, why couldn’t he do it? Especially when they came to him for features on their songs. the timeline for this also works out, because Aaron Marshall did two songs with Polyphia around this time: ‘Persevere’ in 2013, and then ‘Sweet Tea’ in 2015. I don’t blame Aaron for wanting an instrumental project, but I don’t like that he screwed over some other great musicians, and a band that had a great formula with vocals.
Ultimately, Anup left Intervals whether he wanted to or not, and that’s why I’m not a huge fan of Aaron or what has become of Intervals. I may also be biased just because I’m a drummer who really likes Anup, and I really really loved that one Intervals record with vocals.
After Intervals and Skyharbor, Anup went on to play with and record for a ton of other artists. He was in Monuments for some time and recorded drums for their album, Phronesis. He recorded drums for two Devin Townsend albums, and he toured extensively with Jeff Loomis, plus many others. With this ridiculous of a discography, you’d think more people would know about Anup and his music, but unfortunately I feel like non vocalists or guitarists generally don’t get much notice (Although he does have 45k monthly listeners on Spotify, so maybe I’m just talking to the wrong people). Anup Sastry has two solo albums up on Spotify, and you should check out his Youtube channel for some amazing drum videos. If all that isn’t enough, he also sells some drum samples and does session work as a drummer, which you can find details about on his website.
To wrap this section up, I wanted to share a story, even though it’s embarrassing. Once when I met Matt Halpern, drummer for Periphery (and good friend of Anup), I wanted to bring up Anup to Matt because I knew they were friends and I thought it was really cool there were so many awesome drummers in Maryland. So I mentioned Anup, but pronounced his name [ Aye-Nup ], and immediately was corrected by Matt to the actual pronunciation, [ Ah-Noop ]. 16-year-old me was incredibly embarrassed but Matt was super nice about it. I will never again mispronounce his name though.
Joey Baca
Joey Baca is a fantastic progressive metal drummer from the band, The Contortionist. I do know that The Contortionist is a relatively popular band in the progressive metal genre, but I believe that despite this, Baca still is fairly unknown.
My personal experience around him and The Contortionist was this; I was pretty adverse to deathcore music back when I was in early high school, and didn’t really like much heavier stuff until later on at the later years of high school and into early college. Because of this, when I first heard The Contortionist sometime between 2011 and 2012, I immediately discounted them as bland, mindless deathcore. Now before you give me shit for this, let me explain that I have c h a n g e d. I like deathcore now, even the mindless stuff sometimes, and I can appreciate heavy shit for the sake of being heavy. I will say though, that that was a super really extraordinarily bad take. The Contortionist is very progressive, and very tight, and I was wrong to judge them back when I was a dumb high-schooler who couldn’t handle heavier vocals.
Anyway, one day around 2015/2016 I went to go see some bands at The Fillmore in Maryland and they happened to be on the bill. I was probably going to see Periphery or something, and I ended up watching Joey Baca and the rest of the guys in The Contortionist absolutely blow my mind. They were so good live, and I was immediately hooked. Language quickly became one of my favorite albums of all time, and the whole time I was wondering why I was so dumb to overlook these guys and this incredible drummer.
I think I watched every single playthrough/drum cam video of Joey that Youtube had to offer, and then I watched them all 100 more times. I was so inspired to get back into playing that I taught myself all of ‘Language pt. 1’ and ‘Language pt. 2’ on drums. At the time it was definitely the hardest thing I had ever learned to play. Honestly, I don’t think I ever got it down super clean, but I’m still proud of myself for putting the effort in to learn those songs back then.
With each album The Contortionist puts out, it seems like they get more progressive. That being said, I think Language is a better album than Clairvoyant, but that also could be because of when I really got into them. It’s now been almost 6 years since their last album and I hope that they release some material soon. I don’t blame them for taking their time, though; I’d rather they take the time to put together a truly great album than rush into something forgettable (plus covid years don’t count so it’s been more like 4 years in normal time).
Joey Baca is a super solid and technical drummer, and he definitely deserves more recognition. Like I said before, while The Contortionist is a pretty big name in prog metal, I still feel like drummers in general get the short end of the stick (pun intended) because no one ever asks about the drummer’s name in a band. Drummers are contributing members of bands people too!
Joseph Arrington
This drummer is a bit of anomaly on this list, because I wouldn’t exactly consider him to be a progressive metal drummer. Joseph Arrington is a really sick drummer, and honestly has some of the most incredible dynamic control I’ve ever seen, and he definitely still deserves the descriptor of progressive for his drumming. He also has been a part of so many different projects that I consider him a super musician, much like Anup Sastry.
I’m sure that Arrington was in many groups over the years as he made his way to what he’s known for now, but the first group that I heard him in was A Lot Like Birds, one of the many awesome post-hardcore bands that hailed from the Sacramento area of California. I could write a lot about the post-hardcore scene in this area, but I want to focus on Arrington here. Although ALLB disbanded around 2018, Arrington had a lot more in store.
First of all, he already had been playing in a project band called Sianvar, which was formed with some legends from the post-hardcore scene: Donovan Melero of Hail The Sun, Sergio Medina of…. well a lot of bands but notably Stolas (I could talk about this guy for a long time), and Will Swan of the band who we don’t support anymore. Sianvar unfortunately is on indefinite hiatus now following their second album back in 2018.
After both of these projects ended, Arrington went on to be in some other bands, notably Royal Coda with Kurt Travis, as well as recording drums for Kurt’s solo music. He also recorded drums and played for Kurt’s side project with Brandon Ewing (Chon), Gold Necklace. On top of all of these, he even has a small side project called La Taiga, which is self-described as “Retro soundscapes for the prismatic and the melancholy.” Actually in the writing of this article, I found out that he’s part of yet ANOTHER project called Secret Gardens (edit: I actually remember Secret Gardens because they had a song featuring Eidola awhile back, it was pretty good). He has writing credits on a handful of songs from what seems to be an instrumental project from one main contributing member. Jeez, this guy never stops.
While earlier I said Arrington isn’t exactly a progressive metal drummer, I still think he belongs on this list because he plays extremely complex and interesting drums in all the bands he’s been involved with. His playing can definitely fall into the prog-rock or prog post-hardcore genres. I also wanted to include him here because I feel like a lot of the other musicians he plays with (Kurt Travis, Donovan Melero, etc.) are relatively well-known for their music scene, while Arrington remains in relative obscurity. Maybe he enjoys it that way, but I feel like this guy absolutely deserves more recognition for his delicate and skillful playing.
I first learned about him when I was listening to a lot of Hail The Sun and Sianvar. I remember I got really into the Sianvar song, ‘Omniphobia.’ The lo and behold, there was a playthrough of it from Joseph up on youtube, and I was completely floored by this guy’s dynamics. His ghost notes were so perfect and he did these abstract linear fills that just seemed to spill out over the kit, but somehow in a controlled spill. You have to watch the video to truly understand what I’m talking about, so here you go:
Brandon Burkhalter
Last, but certainly not least, we have Mr. Burkhalter, formerly of Polyphia. now, I don’t really like Poylphia, and honestly it’s probably mainly because of the situation that occurred between the rest of the band and Brandon. I also just don’t really love the super flashy, in-your-face style of instrumental music they’ve evolved into.
The history between Brandon and the rest of Polyphia is hard to decipher because it occurred so long ago at this point, and a lot of stuff got deleted from the internet. From what I can remember and from what I could dig up in 2023, Brandon obviously was a founding member, but got disgruntled with the way the rest of the band was portraying themselves on social media and maybe the way they were acting in general. He then got pretty depressed and felt like they weren’t doing the best they could to be a good example for other aspiring musicians.
Fast forward a few years and he made his exit from the band on rocky terms, with fans mostly siding with Tim Henson and the rest of Polyphia. The part that is confusing to me is that he returned to Polyphia for about a year after he was quickly replaced in the first set of issues. I’m not sure why he came back, but I do remember him being kicked out of the band the second time around and being replaced with (another) a guy named Clay. This was the final straw for me; You cannot convince me otherwise that a band with TWO people named Clay is not also full of tools. However, this is my opinion and I understand some people like them still. They’re all great musicians nonetheless, I just choose not to like them based on character and the style their music turned to.
But anyway, let’s get back to Brandon, who was supposed to be the main focus of this section. Brandon is an exceptionally talented drummer, and when I was still pretty new to metal drumming and double bass, I stumbled upon his playthrough of the Polyphia song, ‘Persevere.’ It was like nothing I had ever seen at the time, and he made such amazing fills and most importantly made it look incredibly easy. I think I watched that video 100+ times and showed it to all my friends. Then later on Polyphia’s first LP, Muse, Brandon recorded another playthrough, this time of the song ’87.’ I don’t think this video exists anywhere on the internet anymore except very very deep down, but it was pretty tight, and I loved watching this guy just soar through complicated grooves and fills like it was nothing.
Now Brandon has been making his own music and releasing it every once in awhile, and coincidentally he just released a new album last Friday! It’s called Dark World and I assume it’s available on most streaming platforms, but also you should head over to his site here and check it out, support him if you can. I’m super stoked that he’s still writing music and doing his thing, I hope he can continue to make the world a better place with his talent.
Conclusion
These were a few progressive metal drummers that really helped shape my interest in music as well as my goals as a musician while I was growing up listening to metal and discovering cool bands. I hope every one of these guys continues to write music, play music, and inspire everyone around them like they did to me.
Please let me know if you have any sick drummers that you think deserve more notice!
