Modern Rock Is Dead.
December 13, 2007 by Scott
In my opinion, modern rock as we know it is dead. There are very few credible bands these days in the scene to keep it alive. Just about any rock station you listen to is either playing Nickelback, jet, classic rock hits and 80’s and 90’s stuff. There is no new bands these days that are making an impact.
Bottom line to me is that rock is dead. Rock is boring. Rock hit it’s all time high and can not evolve anymore. If it did evolve it wouldnt be rock anymore. Where can rock go…nowhere. It’s literally a flatline of mediocre songs that are sometimes fun to sing along to but nothing epic, nothing substantial.
Metal on the other hand has evolved and eventually will come full circle just to evolve again. I don’t think we have to worry about metal dying out anytime in this generation but painfully so…rock is dead.
you’re on crack – metal will never take a mainstream stage because it doesn’t resonate with most fans. even old school metal types hate the sound of the unintelligible drivel they pass off these days for metal.
Nope, I’ve ben on a crack free diet my whole life thanks to observations of people like yourself.
Metal is more mainstream now than it has ever been and thats exactly why we have the bands with unintelligible drivel.
What does rock have to offer? Daughtry? Airbourne? The Mars Volta? CrapX3. There is nothing new that is even worth waisting a breath for these days in modern rock. The only significant thing going on in rock are bands that have been around since the seventies that are still putting out mediocre records trying to cling on the the lasst threads of their careers.
The one thing I notice about rock and pop is that they’ve not evolved or changed in over 3 decades. If you listen to metal a decade ago and now, there are extreme differences… double-bass, voices have gone from high to scary lows, and solos are not the center of the song anymore. I’m going to have to agree with you.
I like the fact that there ARE still bands out there that either do incorporate solos (and good one) into their songs or they keep the riffs interesting enough and not just a CHUGGA, CHUGGA all the time.
I like the fact that there are aolso bands that have the low scary sounding vocals that are understandable and yet throw some good singing vocals into the songs as well. There is so much subgenre fusing in metal these days and I love it.
metal is shit fuck it it all sux and is decrepit
party on punx
Hey mom…you say metakl is shit, but your email is “slipknotfan954@yahoo.com”…wtf?
you suck mada fuckin` bitch
Thanks, I love you too!
man shut up. ac/dc is goin every where in there career before they die and it’ll go on and on till rock is gone for good. so y don’t u get ur dick out ur ass and listen cause metal and rock r basically the same
AC/DC’s career is a single flat line going not up nor down. I’m not a huge AC/DC fan but the great thing about AC/DC is they always put out basic great records. Nothing epic nothing shitty… basic good rock…but they are not modern rock by any means. Their sound has not changed in 30 years.
And metal and rock are basically not the same.
To an extent, I agree that rock, as we used to know it and adore it, is dead. But that’s only a nomenclature issue. We have given different names to everything that rock has evolved into, and now we only save the name “rock” for the extremely vanilla guitar driven music. If it’s a bit too experimental, then it gets its own name, and we move on.
Thats also the problem with metal these days, Dave. Everything that has a slightly distorted guitar now gets filed under “Heavy Metal”. I’m surprised there has not been a genre created called “Pop-Metal”
Rock has been driven in the last, I want to say 20 years towards a more pop/rock genre. It’s not what it used to be. While I feel that bands like Nickelback, The Foo Fighters, Seether and Staind still hold something slightly true to the rock scene, everything else seems to fall short and is driven more towards the masses of pop/rock/(wanna-be) punk scene where it seems that it is more in the mind to sell a stale immitation of rock for the purpose of selling records and not so much for the cause and enjoyment of rock. Even some of the classic rock bands such as Aerosmith and Kiss who have honed their sound towards a much more pop sound seem to fall short. Kiss was a great rock band back in the day but these days Kiss is a market and no longer a rock band. The rolling stones and AC/DC have not really changed their sounds all that much in the last 40 years and still seem to sell records without compromising their sound and following. You also have the washed out bands (Glam rock) that continue to try to revive and pedal their old sounds to the masses but have short lived reunions and take a b-line towards the bargain bins.
As far as everything else goes…it’s all pop music to me and true rock n roll music…is dead.
Turn off the radio. Word of mouth. Live local shows. Blogs. That’s how I find new music. There is good rock out there to be had. It’s just not going to be a Nickelback or a Staind. And you’ll probably never get to see the bands you find in an arena. That’s fine by me.
It’s also probably going to be mixed with some other genres. So I suppose, in a way, I agree with you. I can’t stand to listen to anything the Foo Fighters have done in this decade.
Turn off the radio you say?…I do, especially every time I hear that Finger 11 song come on every ten minutes.
We used to have a killer classic rock station that had Bob and Tom in the morning. First it changed by not broadcasting bob and tom anymore and then one day they were playing Alice In Chains The Rooster, which seemed odd because they never played that song before. When the song ended….the station was no longer classic rock, but a country station…106.1 The Rooster. Go Figure.
Thats all radio to me is good for these days is classic rock and morning shows but both seem few and far between. Well in my area it is anyway
erwerwtwertewrt
God I hate Nickelback.
The Mars Volta are good, but they are not really rock, more of a unique experimental band and I listen to a lot of obscure shit so it’s just what I like. But rock is dead as fuck, metal will keep on going, but where the true evolution of music lies is in the realm of the obscurities, the avante garde, and the undefinable. Artists like Buckethead, Primus, Venetian Snares, & Dr. Steel, are all nigh undefinable and certainly if labelled have exceeded the boundaries of said labels.
Indie music killed rock, when you get down to basics rock and indie are pretty much the same thing. Guitar and drums, some keyboards and a catchy riff or two. The difference is, rock never tried to be mainstream music, it was like a buffer between the processed cheese of pop music and the delicacies of Metal. Indie came along and wiped that line out, by pandering to the mass market. Rock is dead, Metal rules forever!
I’m not sure what problem people have with the Foo Fighters, especially the person that mentioned not liking anything they released this decade.. Foo has been the only solid act that’s not become pop drivel like Nickelback and Kid Rock in the last 10 years. (Speaking in the sense of acts that have actually been around and active for 10 years.)
When all your songs are about having parties and banging chicks while your voice is digitally altered to sound decent (whether or not it needs to) it’s time to punch yourself in the face.
As for the not liking anything from this decade from Foo, that just puts you at pouty whineface status, grunting angrily when they don’t play Everlong. Great song, but they didn’t end there.
“When all your songs are about having parties and banging chicks while your voice is digitally altered to sound decent (whether or not it needs to) it’s time to punch yourself in the face.”
That just made my day!
The problem with most of the new rock bands these days is that they are trying to look-the-look and live the Rock-star profile instead of making good music that people besides the MTV fans will like. Nickelback, good musicians but annoyingly repetitive, mediocre songs.
Hate to break it to you, but Foo is a straight-up mainstream pop act now. Drivel? No, I wouldn’t call them drivel, but they aren’t doing anything really new at all anymore. I haven’t liked anything of theirs since before One by One. I bought One by One when the first single came out and besides that one song there isn’t much to speak of. It was pretty ho-hum.
Beyond that I’m in agreement that there are no real great straight up rock acts coming out that are worth much attention. The genre is in stagnation, and when that happens mediocrity reigns supreme. Even the indie scene (as far as rock goes) is getting pretty tired. There are some good things coming out, but they’re few and far between.
Hard Metal acts are, in terms of ratio, still doing ok, but it’s mainly non-American bands (which is fine). Europe has been steadily outdoing the U.S. in terms of interesting metal acts.
The music industry in general is just lame right now. They’ll of course blame downloading and lost revenue for it, but the honest reality is just that either there aren’t many good acts starting up, or those that do are not getting record deals. Both could be true.
Honestly I think downloading will, inevitably, help the quality of music that comes out (after the growing pains are worked out). The market will rely less on pre-teens and fickle high schoolers for revenue (since that demographic probably scoffs at the idea of paying for music by now) and focus more on adults with money and more matured musical tastes.
There are a few acts that have been around that still release respectable music. Tesla’s latest wasn’t bad and neither was Candlebox’s new one. Shinedown is ok. Nothing super great but still alright. AC/DC’s new one was…we, an AC/DC record. Nothing groundbreaking, but a solid AC/DC album. The modern rock band that I’m most pleased with is Seether. Other than that, I can’t put my finger on a really good newer rock band that I like.
I will argue the high worth of Foo till the day I die, but I know some people don’t like them and that’s fine. All I’m saying is that they are more than Colour and the Shape.
They’ve tried new things; Skin and Bones, In Your Honor 2 disc Hard/Mellow format, even a ditty with no words on Echoes, etc, yet still managed to stay true to the gritty rock edge Dave forged with his own hands.
Call me a fanboy, but there really isn’t anything around right now that can top Foo in my eyes.