Barbariön - My Rock. You've got the Grim Reaper on drums, barbarians playing guitar, a kid with a patch jacket, thunder and lightning, soaring vocals, large beards, the ability to yell so epically that it knocks a dissenting father through the wall, turns the mom into a groupie with a ripped up shirt and miniskirt, and lifts the house from its foundation into Valhalla. Fucking Metal.
U2: Elevation video shows Bono and The Edge fighting the Big Bad from the first Tomb Raider movie with a shockwave created by Edge's guitar.
The Darkness: I Believe in a Thing Called Love has the band fighting off a tentacled alien monster on their spaceship using the power of Rock.
Jason Forrest: War Photographer both uses and then ultimately subverts this trope by having a duel between humongous transformingvikingmecha with laser-shooting electric rock guitars being decided by an acid-spewing marching band.
DragonForce: Operation Ground and Pound shows the band fighting off a fleet of enemy spaceships with the power of metal. (Yes, that guy did just shoot a bolt of lightning from his keytar.) There's also a guitar duel. Subverted, because most of the actual fighting takes place inside a video game played by guitarists Herman Li and Sam Totman.
Also, in the video for Heroes of Our Time, the band appears to power a fleet of rockets with their music.
And then in The Last Journey Home, they blow up part of Los Angeles by rocking out too hard.
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion: "Burn It Off" has the band members using The Power of Blues-Influence Rock 'n' Roll to defeat various Ray Harryhausen monsters.
Using the power of rock to lead humanity into Nirvana would have been the plot of Pete Townshend's Lifehouse film, had it been produced when he first conceived of it in 1970. The project was ultimately released as a radio play in 1999, but its story was vastly different.
During live performances of "Octavarium" and "The Dark Eternal Night", Dream Theater shows short films of their animated selves fighting monsters with their musical prowess (or in the case of drummer Mike Portnoy, the power of his saliva).
The StyxRock Opera/Concept Album "Kilroy Was Here" featured a dystopian future where the Culture Police have outlawed rock and roll. Dissident Robert Orwin Charles Kilroy, newly freed from prison, sets out to spark a revolution the help of an electric guitar, a synthesizer, and an arsenal of 80s power chords.
Subverted in the music video for "Fashion Zombies!" by The Aquabats!. The superhero band is chased around by teenager gangs dressed in various fashion trends: 80's, goth, punk, prep school, etc. When cornered they whip out their instruments and proceed to rock. Once they've finished with the song, the teenagers descend upon them. When the crowd recedes, the Aquabats have been transformed into fashion zombies.
Let's not forget the Charlie Daniels Band song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia"!
Rush's 2112. However, the protagonist doesn't succeed by himself and ends up killing himself before seeing the Solar Federation overthrown.
In Hammerfall's video for the song "Hearts on Fire", they defeat an army of skeletons by using their music to summon a circle of runestones and cast a rather apocalyptic-looking spell.
The Music video for Earthquake by Labrinth has multiple shots of him waving his arms about causing shock-waves of bass, while the lyrics liken this to "dropping bombs leaving rubble and dust".
Finnish band Lordi in the video for their song "Hard Rock Hallelujah" use the Power of Rock to knock down part of a school gymnasium, transform a cute Goth girl into a sorceress, and, most importantly, kill people and resurrect them as zombies.
"Rock the Casbah" by the Clash is about a rock band inspiring a military coup in a middle-eastern country very similar to Iran.
In the music video for Dokken's "Dream Warriors", the band fights off Freddy Krueger. And it gets better, the whole video turns out to be a nightmare that Freddy is having.
And in the "Breaking the Chains" video, George Lynch can LITERALLY break chains via his guitar solo.
We would be remiss not to mention one instance of the Power of Rock being an evil power, in its capacity to bring the dead back to life...for one of the most awesome music videos ever. Michael can't get enough of this power he seems to have over the dance floor.
British comedy jazz-funk-lounge-rock merchants Pillow Talk have a song called "Doctor Roland Parker Versus the Defibrillator", in which Dr Roland Parker (their bassist) defeats a monstrous killer defibrillator with "the awesome power of the bass".
Roger Waters' song "The Tide is Turning" was a tribute to Live Aid, and perhaps a tribute to this trope. "I'm not saying that the battle's been won / but Saturday Night all those kids in the sun / rescued technologies sword from the hands of the warlord". Does equal time as a Protest Song as well
Starship's "We Built This City" is about this trope and how rock has influenced culture.
In this video for White Wizzard's song Over the Top, the white wizard uses the power of Heavy Metal to kill the evil wizard.
Dream Theater occasionally have cute animations playing in the background when they play some songs live of them turning zombies into happy people/defeating wolfmen/scaring spiders away/saving James LaBrie (more's the pity) through their elemental powers of music.
The Protomen's music has been noted to rout armies of killer robots and save doomed cities. If they can't quite handle the job, their fans have been known to help.
Don't forget their drummer The Reanimator, who destroys his sticks in every show (then throws them into the audience) and destroys drumheads quite regularly too.
Subverted by Boombox; the titular boombox makes people chill out, cease being enemies, dance, etc, which works fine at a dinner of the rich and privileged, and fine in the streets of New York, but at an old-folks home, the effects are rather unfortunate.
A boombox can change the world. / You gotta know your limits with a boombox. / This was a cautionary tale. / A boombox is not a toy.
In the music video for Damn Yankees' "Higher Enough," Ted Nugent repels bullets with the power of his guitar solo.
The Damned Things in We've Got A Situation Here. The band discovers how use the Power of Rock to shoot laser beams. They use that to "rock" Wallstreet, unemployment problems and even the junk size of men, and turn evil assailants into HOT punk rocker chicks.
Status Quo released a song called The Power Of Rock - years after the idea had already become a cliche, but somewhat redeemed by having most of the song in a surprisingly slow tempo. They later took this a step further, releasing Rock Till You Drop (their own song, not a cover) which was a slow, folky 3/4-time ballad.
Harry And The Potters evoke this trope in concert when they introduce their song "The Weapon". Their song "Voldemort Can't Stop the Rock" also has shades of this.
During live shows, usually during the self-titled song, Iron Maiden's mascot Eddie shows up in robotic form and fought off by the band (Nicko Mc Brain, the drummer, throws drumsticks, whereas the guitarists beat him with guitars and play in his face).
In the video to Les Rythmes Digitales' "(Hey You) What's That Sound", Jacques Lu Cont zaps passersby with a keytar, turning them into their more-inclined-to-dance The '80s equivalents - for instance a group of teenagers loitering by a convenience store become boombox-wielding breakdancers. This all leads up to a massive eighties dance party in the streets.
Twisted Sister has this in several of their music videos, including "I Wanna Rock" and "We're Not Gonna Take It", where a cruel school teacher or father is literally thrown through windows and walls by the Power of Rock.
Grave Digger can raise the recently dead (or even, as the lyrics suggest, not-so-recently). Strangely, a new costume appears under the resurrectee's clothing as a side effect.
The titular nation-state depicted in Avatar's 2018 album Avatar Country is an entire place built on the Power of Rock, if their videos are anything to go by.
The King Welcomes You To Avatar Country: The power of metal forms part of their medical science. Administering Manowar on vinyl intravenously somehow rouses someone from a near-comatose state. Conversely, administering house music causes his condition to worsen.
The King Wants You: Avatar themselves are the kingdom's propaganda machine (who are also front-and-centre in Statue Of The King), the army is called to arms by way of a cowbell played next to a colossal horn and, best of all, guitarists have the power to destroy whole platoons with lasers emitted by an awesome solo. Those same lasers - as shown by the one fired by the King - also power a city-wide defense shield when fired into a large prism/crystal.
Parliament's Motor Booty Affair is a concept album about raising Atlantis to the surface through the power of Funk
Steam Powered Giraffe has 'The Space Giant' from their so-called 'space opera' The Vice Quadrant, in which the band's characters travel into space to defeat the aforementioned giant, who is consuming a planet known as the Green Apple. The following narration occurs before this trope is played out:
[But first] the Space Giant needed proof that this truly was Steam Powered Giraffe, so it proposed a duel, and revealed a guitar made out of the cosmos. The ensuing duel would come to be known as the most awesome duel in all the universe.
Played for laughs by Starbomb in A Wild Guitar Solo Appears. Pikachu tries to defeat large Pokemon in battle by playing rock music at them. He gets stomped repeatedly.
English folk singer’s Frank Turner’s I Still Believe is a song about this trope: “Now who'd have thought that after all, Something as simple as rock 'n' roll would save us all.”
Irish punk rock band Stiff little fingers has a song titled guitar and drum. Generally the message is about how hard the music industry sucks, but the in the chorus, they express their belief in the power of music and the hope it can carry.
beabadoobee: In the video for "I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus", Bea's guitar skills cause the government scientists holding her captive's ears to bleed, presumably enabling her escape.
the Mountain Goats has "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," a song about two troubled teenagers trying to make a name for themselves. The song starts with naive optimisim, but when Cyrus gets sent to boarding school, he nearly hits despair before he and Jeff make a plan to "get even" and form the best death metal band together.
. You've got the Grim Reaper on drums, barbarians playing guitar, a kid with a patch jacket, thunder and lightning, soaring vocals, large beards, the ability to yell so epically that it knocks a dissenting father through the wall, turns the mom into a groupie with a ripped up shirt and miniskirt, and lifts the house from its foundation into Valhalla. Fucking Metal.