Rolling Stone’s article breaks down the genre, claiming that it’s a shell of its former self and roasting multiple bands. Referring to Five Finger Death Punch as professional ‘roid ragers,” Greta Van Fleet as “expert forgeries” and Bad Wolves as “overproduced schlock”.
The article does mention, because of Rock’s heaviest hitters not producing new music, is the reason why Rock lacked depth in 2018.
During a year when the Big Rock Behemoths — Foo Fighters, Metallica, Radiohead — opted to own the road instead of the charts (with the exception of Paul McCartney, who did both), it left a gap for newer artists to rise to the top. Unfortunately, most of the songs sound like color-by-numbers duplicates of each other.
Rolling Stone then calls out bands:
The year’s biggest hits included overproduced schlock like Imagine Dragons and Bad Wolves, expert forgeries like Greta Van Fleet and whole lot of music, quizzically, from last year. That’s right, multiple songs from 2017 comprise 2018’s biggest singles.
Nu-metal stalwarts Godsmack are forever pissed off and hating the world on their Number One, “Bulletproof.” Badflower ruminate on suicide and want to haunt everyone on “Ghost.” And the professional ‘roid ragers in Five Finger Death Punch want to death-punch everyone who’s ever shit-talked them.
While they do blast those bands in the article, they do give credit where it’s due:
This year was actually great for rock and its many subgenres, thanks to smart records by Sleep, Death Cab for Cutie, Nine Inch Nails, Deafheaven, Breeders, Phantastic Fernature, Judas Priest, Superchunk, Halestorm, Lucius and many, many other artists. There are also younger artists blazing a trail for rock, like Snail Mail, Big Joanie and Goat Girl, that offer hope for the future. You just won’t see most of them on the mainstream charts or hear them on the radio, where the lines of rock and pop will continue to blur like a photocopied drawing of Mao. You just have to look harder to find something incredible between the lines.
What do you think about Rock Music this year? Did it really suck?
Sound off in the comments below!
