10 Noteworthy Rock Bands That Don’t Have a Drummer

No matter where you are in the world, everyone knows the sound of a rock band: vocals, guitars, bass, and drums. Simple, effective, and easy to recreate in your own living room or garage. But, while drums are generally considered an essential part of the rock band sound—driving the beat, maintaining the rhythm, and providing the low-end that gets us stamping our feet—some pretty significant rock outfits have managed to go without.

In place of a proper drummer and a full kit, a select few bands have utilized touring musicians, session musicians, alternative percussive elements, and many drum machines. Although most of them have a strong drum presence on their popular tracks, none of these groups have a slot for a drummer in the band lineup.

Related: 10 Bands That Truly Lived a Punk Lifestyle

10 Cocteau Twins

Scottish rock band Cocteau Twins hit their prime in the ’80s, delivering an ethereal post-punk sound with Robin Guthrie on guitars, Will Heggie on bass, and Elizabeth Fraser providing their high, layered vocals. This sound became their calling card, and the prolific trio helped define shoegaze as a new genre of rock alongside other British bands such as The Jesus and Mary Chain.

From the beginning, Cocteau Twins worked with whatever they could get their hands on, and this did not include a drummer. Guthrie preferred the precision and timing of drum machines and sequencers to a live kit. He experimented with effects and loops that could add an extra dimension to the band. This included using white and pink noise generators he built to give their sound more body.

Despite the drums being programmed on some questionable equipment, they sound authentic on each album and add substantial depth to an already deep soundscape. The one major downside of this process is the band often couldn’t remember what they had made in the studio, playing their own records before shows to help them recreate their music. ^[1]

9 Big Black

U.S. punk rock pioneers Big Black may only have been around from the early to late ’80s, but during that time, they put out two groundbreaking albums that changed the scene immeasurably.

Comprised of singer and guitarist Steve Albini, bassists Jeff Pezzati and Dave Riley, and guitarist Santiago Durango, the group departed from the UK-led punk rock tradition and instead delved into an abrasive style of music characterized by metallic-sounding guitars and drum machines. Initially, a drum machine was chosen instead of a drummer because it was convenient and facilitated Albini making demos on his own without needing to involve any other musicians—and after the other members joined, the idea stuck.

Albini was inspired by the electronic drums on Kraftwerk and Cabaret Voltaire records and sought to take the drum machine seriously and treat it as a band member in its own right. This involved him drawing on all the elements that made the machine distinct from a human drummer—rigid patterns, speedy delivery, and endless endurance—and made these attributes a core part of the band’s sound, unintentionally setting the path for the 1990s industrial rock scene.^[2]

8 Busted

Formed in England around the turn of the millennium, Busted sought to bring America’s pop-rock and skate-punk sound to the UK, with bassist Matt Willis, guitarist Charlie Simpson, and guitarist James Bourne all sharing vocal duties, and no drummer to back them up. And by all accounts, they were a smash hit from day one.

But with success came attempts to make the rock group into a boyband. The record label wanted to emphasize their unique selling point—three young, handsome frontmen—and consistently pushed the production of the band’s songs toward the pop end of the pop-rock spectrum, promoting the band members’ image more than the music itself.

The label went so far as to turn down the drums to keep the focus up front, and with only a roster of touring musicians manning the kit at their shows and session musicians playing on the albums, there was nobody properly positioned to tell them no. This led to friction with Simpson, which saw him split off after just two albums to make much heavier music with the post-hardcore group Fightstar, which had put Busted on ice for a decade.^[3]

7 Two Door Cinema Club

Formed during the heyday of MySpace, Two Door Cinema Club first got noticed by having a lax approach to the downloading of their music, allowing their tunes to spread far and wide in record time. The Irish three-piece are all multi-instrumentalists, with Alex Trimble, Sam Halliday, and Kevin Baird leading on vocals, guitar, and bass, respectively, and sharing keyboards, synthesizers, programming, backing vocals, and other elements between them.

One of these elements is the drums. The band has never had a drummer and, for the most part, has used digital kits, only dipping into the real thing when the song called for it. This is because they typically program the drums first, then write their riffs and lyrics to the established beat rather than the other way around.

When Two Door started out performing in small bars and clubs, they used a laptop for drums onstage. This caused a few technical hiccups and led to a decision to adopt a touring drummer for the live shows, beefing up their stage presence and ensuring no mishaps with hooking up their devices ever happened again.^[4]

6 Sixx:AM

Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx formed Sixx:AM in 2007 to write music accompanying his autobiography The Heroin Diaries. The supergroup featured Sixx on bass, DJ Ashba of Guns ‘N Roses on guitar, and singer/producer James Michael handling vocals and production. Their contemporary hard rock sound provided a strong basis for the band’s decade-and-a-half-long career, placing them on par (and on stages) with the genre’s other leading acts.

Despite having a massive sound and presence, the band decided to forgo an official drummer in their lineup. Instead, singer James Michael programmed drums and handled the mixes using ProTools on the band’s first two albums. But for their third effort—2014’s Modern Vintage—the group felt they needed to take it up a notch and capture a “big album vibe” with a live drummer.

Thus, Sixx, Ashba, and Michaels wrote the songs for the third album and got Black Label Society’s Jeff Fabb to record drums with a full kit and their touring drummer Dustin Steinke handled the studio sessions for their final releases, two-parter album Prayers for the Damned and the Blessed.^[5]

5 Her’s

Her’s was an indie rock band formed in Liverpool, England, featuring guitarist and singer Stephen Fitzpatrick and bassist and backing vocalist Audun Laading. The duo met at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts in the mid-2010s and were releasing music—to critical acclaim—by 2016.

Despite Fitzpatrick being an excellent drummer, the band opted to use a drum machine, with both members contributing to programming the drums on their songs. Rather than push it right to the back of the mix, they made this element a key feature of their sound, with most of their songs featuring a strong drum machine presence. And, after touring without a live drummer, they opted to keep it this way permanently, enjoying the additional space onstage without the presence of a full kit.

Sadly, both members and their manager were killed in a road collision in 2019 while touring the U.S., traveling from Phoenix, Arizona, to Santa Ana, California, and leaving behind a legacy of just one studio album and a compilation album of their initial singles.^[6]

4 Marine Girls

An oft-overlooked but surprisingly influential post-punk group from England, Marine Girls was formed in 1980 by schoolgirls Tracey Thorn (on vocals and guitar) and Gina Hartman (on vocals and percussion). Soon joined by Jane Fox on bass, with her sister Alice replacing Hartman, the band cut a blistering path through the early eighties. Despite being young, shy, and deeply experimental in their musical style, they recorded two studio albums and two Peel Sessions at the BBC—all without a drummer.

Stepping far outside mainstream rock ‘n roll, the trio adopted a DIY approach to music that ignored the established rules and norms. Rather than filling out their sound with a drum machine or similar contraption, the band opted to go entirely without drums and used wooden blocks and other basic percussion instruments to create off-tempo sounds that complemented the frequently off-tempo vocals.

Despite disbanding for good after just three years on the scene, Marine Girls made waves in the wider music world, inspiring the next generation of talent, including Hole and Nirvana, with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love being big fans of the group.^[7]

3 Fine Young Cannibals

Comprised of Roland Gift on vocals, Andy Cox on guitars and keyboards, and David Steele on bass and keyboards, Fine Young Cannibals grew out of the mid-1980s pop-rock scene in the UK. The band enjoyed near-instantaneous success despite a rocky internal relationship that led them to split up after two albums and eight years together.

Making use of the technology available, they programmed their drums and relied on the expertise of producers and engineers to fully customize their sound. On the band’s second album in particular—The Raw & the Cooked (1989)—they adopted an experimental approach that produced truly idiosyncratic drums.

One such producer and engineer, David Z, was instrumental in realizing the group’s drum sound on this record, including the iconic snare on the number-one single “She Drives Me Crazy.” While recording the track, Z took a headless snare drum and hit it with a ruler before blending in a 12-bit snare. He then played the sample through a speaker atop another snare to give the hollow sound more ambiance. And this sound went on to have a life of its own, being sampled by other charting artists and even featuring in a Pepsi commercial.^[8]

2 The Kills

An essential feature of the 2000s garage rock revival, The Kills was formed in 2001 by American singer Alison Mosshart and British guitarist Jamie Hince. Even though neither was willing to hop on the kit, they mirrored other two-piece bands from the same movement, including The White Stripes, by adopting a lean, power-duo setup. Indeed, Mosshart and Hince were so in tune with each other musically that they felt adding a drummer would only hinder their creativity.

To get around this, Hince initially recorded beats on a tape recorder, then used it as their backing track. When the band came to tracking their first album, Hince moved onto a Roland 880 sequencer, and this filled out their live shows’ rhythm section.

Once their albums moved beyond the raw, stripped-back sound of their early efforts and into more elaborate setups, The Kills brought on additional touring musicians—including, for a time, four drummers on stage. Nevertheless, the Roland is the bedrock of the band’s studio and live sound, and they have toured with it again as recently as 2024.^[9]

1 The Sisters of Mercy

The Sisters of Mercy is an English rock band with a constantly revolving lineup, whose only permanent members are singer-songwriter Andrew Eldritch and perhaps the most famous drum machine of all time.

Fondly named Doktor Avalanche, the band’s drum machine is actually several different drum machines that have been switched out over the years as technology has advanced. This process began when the Sisters formed in the ’80s, with the Boss DR-55 providing the band a synthetic, mechanical, and hypnotic backing sound that became an aesthetic trademark of their records and their live performances.

Moving with the times, the Sisters took up a Roland TR-808, then an Oberheim DMX, and, more recently, shifted to running software from a Mac computer through various samplers and effects boxes. Never content to settle in the status quo, however, Eldritch has ensured that the more realistic drum machines become, the more he tries to make them sound mechanical and electronic.^[10]