A long-held belief about the greatest genre of music ever created is that rock is dead. While rock sometimes takes little naps, it never truly goes away. And that previous phrase has been said so much over the last 40 years that it has become meaningless.
Possibly, the misconception is based on the Billboard and UK charts. If something doesn't reach No. 1, for instance, how important can it be? That is a fairly antiquated way of thinking, and ticket sales on tours and merchandise matter too. Rock bands still succeed on these levels, and there will always be rock bands.
In a recent interview with Consequence, Tobias Forge of Ghost discussed the thought that rock is indeed dead, and nicely called out KISS's Gene Simmons as one of the greater purveyors of this theory. Forge also named a few "new" bands that he thinks are terrific.
Ghost's Tobias Forge doesn't want to hear that rock is dead
Of course, the term new is relative, and Forge gave readers a broadside on how many fans view old bands versus recently begun ones. Many, for instance, still see Ghost as new, even though the band's first music came out 15 years ago. Ghost is not new, and the fact that their most recent album, Skeleta, reached No. 1, was based on years of hard work.
The album was the first hard rock or metal project to reach the top of the charts since 2020. Shortly thereafter, the new Sleep Token album would get to number one, too.
Forge told Consequence, "I think it was Gene Simmons that said it most times, but I mean a lot of people have said that rock 'n' roll is dead and there will be no new headliners. I understand that it's been sparse, but I think that with the unfortunate disappearance of a lot of bands that I like, KISS being one of them, I do believe that with time, I think that there will be more (headlining rock) bands."
This has been the case, historically speaking. In the late 1970s, disco sadly ruled the airwaves, and rock was pushed down. What was actually happening, however, was that punk and post-punk were making their bones and becoming the basis for New Wave and more rock-themed subgenres.
When the same thing happened in the late 1980s, grunge emerged and rock fans found new groups to love. No one in the mid-1980s would have thought bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam would be arriving soon.
As far as new versus old, Forge explained, "Sleep Token or Måneskin or Greta Van Fleet are all new bands. I think they prove that you can absolutely go places. You can form a band tomorrow and theoretically become a big band within a few years. I think you do so by trying to want to create something."
It was on Greta Van Fleet that Forge doubled down, "And I don't wanna hear anything about Greta Van Fleet now, because I think that their intentions are true. And they just happened to sound like someone else, but that's not their fault. So, stop it."