What happened to rock music? And maybe you heard some good new bands ...

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Jan Paparazzi

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So what happened to rock music? And I hope this doesn't turn into a rant, but I seem to have trouble finding some good new rock bands since 2006-2008. I can hardly find anything. I am always looking, but it's though. Let me explain where I come from. I am pretty much a nineties kid, but I also grew up with the classic rock stuff my dad listens to. So when the nineties broke out I was really into all the so-called alternative bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, RATM, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, The Chili Peppers, Faith No More etc. Early 2000's I found a lot of replacement bands in QOTSA, Muse, White Stripes, SOAD, The Hyves etc. Of course I also like the old stuff like Led Zep, Deep Purple, AC/DC, the Stones, the Kinks, Guns & Roses etc.

And then it kinda stopped. Rock became more rare after 2006 and took a nosedive after 2010. I started listening to more metal, because the metal scene seems more healthier than rock in terms of fresh ideas and different bands doing different things. But I am not really a metalhead. I discovered some bands that I like. For example I like The Oh Sees and Idles and some weirder stuff like Black Midi and Melt Banana. But it remains difficult.

When I check on best rock bands and lists online I often find lists with bands that aren't rock at all, like Imagine Dragons, Bastille and Twenty One Pilots. Those bands sound like overproduced millenial pop to me with all the compression, autotune and beat detective work. Or I find lists with a shit load of bands in them that are so heavy they aren't rock at all like finding Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium on those lists. They are metal, not rock and my metal taste is pretty particular. Or it's list with mostly indie rock ... I mean lists with band like Arcade Fire, the National, Vampire Weekend, the War on Drugs, Death Cab for Cutie etc. And those bands are so not my cup of tea.

Does anyone have any good tips for some new bands I may like?
 
Rock is dead, says my cousin-in-law, but i would just say gone underground.

The Pretty Reckless
Greta Van Fleet
Dirty Honey
Red Fang
Witchcraft
Cloudeater
Wolfmother
 
Im a big fan of King King. I don't have the juice to go find a video, but they are very solid blues rock from England. There's a good live show at the Rockpalast on youtube.
 
Yeah, rock is kind of dead. I like Volbeat pretty well, but most bands sound like Nickleback.
The metal scene is great right now though, especially if you like traditional/epic/heavy/power metal. Eternal Champion, Sabaton, Unleash the Archers, Emerald Dream, Argus, Sanhedrin, Iron Griffin, Gatekeeper, Tanith, Ice Sword, Eliminator... So much good stuff.
 
I've been saying rock died in the eighties when all you had to do to have a hit rock song was shout "rock" dozens of time. I think the thing is that rock is the rebellion against the orthodoxy while right not the orthodoxy is ascending. Our great grandkids will rediscover rock and wonder how we lost the freedoms we gained and fell to the authoritarian overlords. It's a good thing. Rock needs oppression to thrive.
 
I've been saying rock died in the eighties when all you had to do to have a hit rock song was shout "rock" dozens of time. I think the thing is that rock is the rebellion against the orthodoxy while right not the orthodoxy is ascending. Our great grandkids will rediscover rock and wonder how we lost the freedoms we gained and fell to the authoritarian overlords. It's a good thing. Rock needs oppression to thrive.
This sounds more like a description of punk, which I'd agree with you on (but further elaboration probably gets pretty political). Rock does just fine singing about sex and drugs and slaying dragons.
 
It's easy to forget how controversial very mild rock and roll was in the late fifties and how much it contributed to social changes over the next decade.
 
So what happened to rock music? And I hope this doesn't turn into a rant, but I seem to have trouble finding some good new rock bands since 2006-2008. I can hardly find anything. I am always looking, but it's though. Let me explain where I come from. I am pretty much a nineties kid, but I also grew up with the classic rock stuff my dad listens to. So when the nineties broke out I was really into all the so-called alternative bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, RATM, Tool, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, The Chili Peppers, Faith No More etc. Early 2000's I found a lot of replacement bands in QOTSA, Muse, White Stripes, SOAD, The Hyves etc. Of course I also like the old stuff like Led Zep, Deep Purple, AC/DC, the Stones, the Kinks, Guns & Roses etc.

And then it kinda stopped. Rock became more rare after 2006 and took a nosedive after 2010. I started listening to more metal, because the metal scene seems more healthier than rock in terms of fresh ideas and different bands doing different things. But I am not really a metalhead. I discovered some bands that I like. For example I like The Oh Sees and Idles and some weirder stuff like Black Midi and Melt Banana. But it remains difficult.

When I check on best rock bands and lists online I often find lists with bands that aren't rock at all, like Imagine Dragons, Bastille and Twenty One Pilots. Those bands sound like overproduced millenial pop to me with all the compression, autotune and beat detective work. Or I find lists with a shit load of bands in them that are so heavy they aren't rock at all like finding Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium on those lists. They are metal, not rock and my metal taste is pretty particular. Or it's list with mostly indie rock ... I mean lists with band like Arcade Fire, the National, Vampire Weekend, the War on Drugs, Death Cab for Cutie etc. And those bands are so not my cup of tea.

Does anyone have any good tips for some new bands I may like?

I was going to mention Thee Oh Sees but I see you already know them.

I haven't kept up on bands these days, right now it seems a lot of the real energy right now is in R&B/soul revival, some metal (particularly doom), hiphop and electronic music.

I tend to like extremes and a lot of even underground rock these days feels too middle of road for me when I do dip in but I'm sure there are good bands out there to find, Bandcamp has a good selection of noise and pysch rock from around the world to get lost in.

More recently, I do like the shoegazey Snail Mail. I guess some would consider it 'indie rock' but it has more of the sharp corners, droney guitar and rawness of 90s underground rock to me.

 
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It's easy to forget how controversial very mild rock and roll was in the late fifties and how much it contributed to social changes over the next decade.

50s rock n roll was not mild. As one writer put it the theme of all 50s rock n roll was fuckin' even if was never overtly stated.







 
Alright before I start reading and start listening to some of the suggestions I would like to say that not finding much of my liking in the mainstream anymore lead to me listening to some music I would otherwise have never listened to. Before 2006 I only listened to 90's alternative and I still like that a lot. Grab a random 90's rock playlist from spotify and I still like 95-99% of what on it. I was not a metal listener before 2006 and that let me to discover Pantera, Slayer, Sepultura, Celtic Frost (big guilty pleasure) and even stuff like Meshuggah, Death, Opeth. I never thought I would like King Diamond, because I thought it was cheesy, but now I like it a lot. I also listened to more old music and more indie and that led me to discover bands and scenes I didn't even knew they existed. I discovered some of my favorites in Neu! (krautrock), Godspeed You! Black Emperor (post-rock), My Bloody Valentine (shoegaze) and Mahavishnu Orchestra (fusion jazz) and discovered some prog rock I like (King Crimson, Rush, Mars Volta) and I normally don't like complicated music. I even discovered Cardiacs and I don't even know which genre they are.

I also want to give a shout out to the KEXP Youtube channel where you can find some cool independent music. Alright now let's start checking some shit!
 
More recently, I do like the shoegazey Snail Mail. I guess some would consider it 'indie rock' but it has more of the sharp corners, droney guitar and rawness of 90s underground rock to me.


Cool, that's why I like the Oh Sees. It has more of an edge. Unfortunately Tame Impala is the band that broke through out of that scene and I think that is probably the least interesting band of them all. If you like Shoegaze check out Widowspeak on KEXP. Thick as Thieves.
 
Yeah, rock is kind of dead. I like Volbeat pretty well, but most bands sound like Nickleback.
The metal scene is great right now though, especially if you like traditional/epic/heavy/power metal. Eternal Champion, Sabaton, Unleash the Archers, Emerald Dream, Argus, Sanhedrin, Iron Griffin, Gatekeeper, Tanith, Ice Sword, Eliminator... So much good stuff.
Alright, this is so not my cup of tea. I can't help it, but I find anything close to power metal so cheesy. I am at the other end of the metal spectrum. I like Sepultura, High on Fire and Celtic Frost.
 
Rock is dead, says my cousin-in-law, but i would just say gone underground.

The Pretty Reckless
Greta Van Fleet
Dirty Honey
Red Fang
Witchcraft
Cloudeater
Wolfmother
First to post, last to react to.
Kinda funny you said underground, but come with the most poppy list of the bunch. Well I quickly checked it out and of course I already know Wolfmother and Greta Van Fleet, but to be honest I am not really that interested in carbon copies of Led Zep and 70's rock in general. On first impression I found the Pretty Reckless and Dirty Honey too poppy, I couldn't find Witchcraft (I think there are more bands called like that, is it the Doom Metal band?) and I have to listen to more Cloudeater to really form an opinion on that band. I couldn't really place them, which could be a good thing. I like Red Fang, but I do like all stoner rock and stoner metal. I mostly go back to Sleep if want to hear something like that though.
 
I suppose one does have to ask is rock a broader category which contains punk, metal, pop, and grunge or whether it's something separate. What I was saying about the fifties is not that there wasn't loud and transgressive rock but that even the really mild stuff was extremely controversial. White kids listening to black music? Who knows how far that will go? :grin:
 
Rock is different things to different people. For me, I've been listening to Revolution Saints a lot. Dean Castronovo has such a great voice, and is one of those rare lead singers who is also the drummer. Jack Blades is a member, so I get my Night Ranger nostalgia from him being there (much like I did with Damn Yankees). Nordic Union is another one I've really enjoyed. Many older bands are still around, thanks to Frontier Music (who specialize in rock music). I don't know if either would be up your alley.

living in Portland now, I listen to a bit of Doom/Psychedelic/Stoner Rock. We've got a lot of those bands up this way. Bands like Tigers on Opium, Hippie Death Cult, Satyress, Dream Wulf, Disenchanter, Dog Lord, Bell Witch, Beast Mountain, Universal Monster, Psyclops, Sons of Huns, Sacred Trees, Perfect Monster, Hound the Wolves and many more. Not to mention all the bands from Seattle or down in California.
 
My favorite album of all-time might be There is Nothing Left to Lose by the Foo Fighters. That was released in 1999. I would say that hard rock can be found but as a big genre it did die out in the mid 2000s.
 
I get that I'm 51 now and it's only natural that I don't like the new popular music, but since 2000 I've felt like we're in the age of karaokie. Rehashing the hits of the past. There is all this hip hop descended autotuned stuff where the singer tries to sound like a hurt child. Not for me, I don't know, somehow, surely some new revelation is at hand.
 
I get that I'm 51 now and it's only natural that I don't like the new popular music, but since 2000 I've felt like we're in the age of karaokie. Rehashing the hits of the past. There is all this hip hop descended autotuned stuff where the singer tries to sound like a hurt child. Not for me, I don't know, somehow, surely some new revelation is at hand.
Yeah autotune, beat detective and a whole lot of compression. I honestly can't differentiate a lot pop, rock, dance and hiphop anymore, because they all get the same production treatment. Bands like Bastille, Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons are rock in name only to me.

But hey, I just found Royal Blood.

 
Yeah autotune, beat detective and a whole lot of compression. I honestly can't differentiate a lot pop, rock, dance and hiphop anymore, because they all get the same production treatment. Bands like Bastille, Twenty One Pilots and Imagine Dragons are rock in name only to me.

Back when Steve Martin was mainly stand-up, he had this joke where he theorized that everything at McDonald's was all ONE thing. And in the back of the restaurant they have this machine that makes all the stuff and you feed the same material in and it comes out as whatever you tell it. Like: "Hamburger." [SPLOIK] "Milkshake." [SQUORT] "Paper box." [SQUOIT]

I think they did the same thing to the music industry.

But hey, I just found Royal Blood.

Not bad.

JG
 

I watch his channel a lot. Very interesting youtube music channel. Rick is the coolest silver-haired dude on youtube. Probably also the only one. I like "What makes this song great?" series a lot. The orchestra during the guitar solo on "No one knows", the clown hitting the beerkeg on "Duality" and the guitars that are out of tune on "One Armed Scissor" are a few of the highlights for me.
 
I was a teenage metalhead, branched out considerably in adulthood. But the last ten years or so, I've gone back to listening to metal mainly. And, these days, a lot of synthwave. I still have a lot of non-metal albums that I like a lot. But for new music, I have a REAL hard time getting interested in anything that isn't metal, either thrash or death metal. It happens, but it's rare.

My wife used to be a radio DJ, and it frustrates her that I'm so close-minded about music. For instance, I just don't like Led Zeppelin. Never really have. But, sometimes I like a song on the radio, and it's a bit on the commercial side, and my wife says she just can't figure me out. Here are a couple of examples of bands/songs I dug, that she definitely didn't (not new):





Now, I'm not a musician, so I know that my taste is not a qualitative judgement. I freely admit that I like a lot of bad music. I like a lot of bad movies, too. That having been said, I like what I like. And shit that's overproduced or "too commercially viable" just irritates me. It just sounds phony. I dunno why. Maybe it's the immature contrarian in me. Pantera is a perfect example of the kind of metal I don't like. It just sounds so watered down to me. They've got platinum records to their credit, so what do I know? Then again, Celine Dion has sold 20 times as many records as Pantera (I looked it up once), and I don't care for her music, either (though no one can deny her talent).

One of the newer metal acts (and hell, they're not that new) I took a liking to is a Brazilian retro-thrash band called Apokalyptic Raids. Basically a Hellhammer/Celtic Frost rip-off/clone/tribute/whatever, but they really nail the sound and production.




I have a small child, I'm sure I'll hate his music as much as my parents hated mine. Time is a flat circle.
 
telling you, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRC_Data is the problem. track sales, duplicate sound, etc etc.

When my wife was new in radio, an older co-worker showed her a bunch of this stuff, or maybe Arbitron data, that he had in the trunk of his car. I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was something he wasn't supposed to have. Violation of FCC regs and maybe even the law, IIRC. She was new in radio, hoping to make a career out of it. I guess he was trying to impress her or something, but she turned him in to their superiors, who apparently took it very seriously. She said she got questioned by feds behind it as well, she felt like maybe they suspected her of something, and it was pretty uncomfortable. I can't remember what came of it.
 
Yea that was serious back in the day. Payola as it was known.

the important part was that with the standardized and verifiable sales data, music could be made to the sales data. This creates an algorithm that reinforces and does not diversify. Useful in some things that are well understood, but not good for more exploratory or creative pursuits. Lightning in a bottle after some point stops being interesting and it becomes just light
 
I definitely of the opinion that almost all guitar/bass/drums outside of jazz groups is rocknroll so I don't consider metal, punk, pop-rock, etc. different genres more different styles.

Knowing a bit of Jan Paparazzi Jan Paparazzi and Gringnr Gringnr's taste you may already be familiar with my current favourite doom band Bell Witch who in their last two albums developed a distinctive, melancholy epic approach to the subgenre.



Also Lingua Ignota creates an unholy mixture of noise, power electronics and doom all on her lonesome.

 
What happened to rock music?

Since the 90s, rock has been dead. So the press amd anyone else with a musical opinion amd a platform to speak from has been telling the masses.

Add that to smaller and smaller pigeonholes. In the 70s, there was rock and a few obvious subsets, plus some oddities like ELO. In the 80s, there were a few more sub categories, but in general, loud guitar+bass+dums+vocals=rock of some kind. Metal and its offspring were in the rock church, as was punk, prog, psychedelia AOR, glam etc al.

Now, American radio steps in with 'classic rock.' Which puts a set age of 15 years or more, iirc. Anyway, this acts as a filter. Newer than that, you don't get played. Nikki Sixx talks a bit about the phenomena here.


Anyway, the tl;dr is, American rock radio plus propaganda makes the truth. Even if there's more to it than that.
 
the singer tries to sound like a hurt child
That pre-pubescent nasal whining sounds more like they're constipated.


I think the last descent pop acts died out sometime near the end of the nineties. I'm not that much into actual rock in the more narrow sense of the genre, though I don´t hate it and there´s the occasional act that I enjoy.
 
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Cyndi Lauper could pull it off, the whole hurt child sound. The current version, well, yuck.
 
I guess the 90s rockk wasn't considered "rock", it was "alternative"? I dunno, there was a lot of good music in the 90s. Nope, it sounded nothing like the 70s, just like 70s rock sounded nothing like the 50s. What defines music as "rock"?

There's been some recent music I reallyreally like. I don't know what genre it fits into





 
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