The power of music cannot be debated — it can strike fear into the strongest and embolden the weakest of us.

The medium that triggers a response within us as we hear a song varies; some love the voice the singer is projecting while others identify with the lyrics that an artist has penned.

For others still, it is the music and the rhythm that resonates in their souls and for local act FC Armenta’s synthesizer player, ASU graduate Ryan McFadden, this is where he and his bandmates hope to find their niche.

“What we gave ourselves to wholeheartedly was the jazz guideline for communication. To say all you want without saying a word, to truly speak instrumentally,” McFadden said.

The band’s debut release, “Eternal Rivals,” is a rollercoaster-like jaunt through an instrumental album charged with emotion.

The broodiness of tracks like opener “Doctor Lascivious” or the dark “Broken Tongues” pose a stark contrast to the chase scene suspense of “Hawk and the Gun,” on which drummer Josh Isaac pounds away like a madman over McFadden’s screeching synthesizer line. It was a conscious decision to include these contrasts, McFadden said.

“We wanted the songs to include these ambient parts that bind the up-tempo time changes, to the probing sonic wave of synthesizers,” he said.

The effectiveness of the band to convey thought and emotion without lyrics is bred from the band’s simplicity. Only a three-piece armed with a guitar, drum set and synthesizer, the band maximizes these instruments to foster an atmosphere, rather than creating an intolerable wall of sound with multiple layers of multiple instruments.

This dynamic is demonstrated best on the rising and falling of “Enferma,” where Isaac’s drums and Matt Owen’s guitar build slowly and then reach an exploding crescendo, giving the track a large sound, only to recede and calm once again.

As “Anjelica Huston We Have a Problem” rounds out the album with a sleepy lull before thrashing drums add a bit of fireworks to the finale, it becomes evident that the band has formulated these tracks not by following the beaten path but by straying from the constraints of popular music.

The reasoning behind that, McFadden said, is simple.

“We are music fans, which explains our lack of mainstream sound. We’re inspired to attempt a new sound,” he said.

McFadden feels that even though his band’s sound is unique, it is simply not its place to take credit for.

“When Pink Floyd took over music with ‘Dark Side of the Moon,’ they opened up a path for so many bands like us that love live instrumentation,” he said. “But we’d have to slap ourselves if we didn’t mention Mogwai, The Mars Volta and Explosions in the Sky as influences.”

Perhaps they are not the pioneers of the instrumental sound that they employ but it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the members of FC Armenta would certainly make their predecessors proud with “Eternal Rivals.”

Reach the reporter at jdfourni@asu.edu.